Two girls dancing (from HOLLYWOOD SINNERS)

an excerpt from my published paperback novel.

(In 1939 Mama Gravy is auditioning Carol for the job of dance hall hostess)

“Capitalism is dying fast and for good. So whoop it up and buy all them jewels and pearls and shoes and cars and caviar and fine things now while you can.” She laughed.

Carol said, “I read that Joan Crawford is a good skate. She ice-skates in her new picture. Everybody does. They just put everything on ice. That sounds keen to me.”

“That’s just what I’m talking about. On ice. See? They’ve run out of things to make movies about. Did you hear about that Gone With The Wind they’re making?”

Carol nodded. “Sure. Everybody has.”

“Everybody’s drumming up the movie with such desperation it only makes me suspicious. I bet the film is really a stinker and will only last a week at the theaters and then disappear, once the public sees what it really is. Clark Gable didn’t want to be in it. He did everything he could to get out of it. That tells me something.”

Carol said, “I’m sure MGM will do a beautiful job. They always do. They’re pretty kippy. And Gable was just bellyaching. They always twist people’s arms to be in things. I don’t know why. You’d think the stars would be grateful for parts. I’d take a part real fast.”

“Fiddle-dee-dee. At MGM they make everything so glittery and pious. Only at MGM could that sugary Jeanette MacDonald sing pretty high notes after a big earthquake.”

“They say I look like her.”

Mama Gravy said, “Pray you don’t. People will start kneeling at you in prayer like Clark Gable - and wanting high notes after their house has fallen down. Horrors.”

“Didn’t that movie do well?”

“The whole town falls down and she’s singing like she’s in a choir loft. It’s all wet. She’s all yesterday’s news by now and she’ll be forgotten for all time.”

Karin said, “But Gone With the Wind is all the talk right now.”

Mama Gravy held Carol even closer and swayed her hips lewdly.

“That’s just hype you hear. That’s just the studio putting itself in print so it can read all about itself. MGM is good at blowing hot air for itself. Believe me. They have public mind control and mass hypnosis down, I’m sure. But that’s not my point. Who wants a war picture right now? Hitler is making trouble in Europe and people have been saying he’s going to start a war and I say that nobody wants to think about war right now. Right now war is a nightmare that’s just too close for comfort for anybody. Nobody will come close to the movie theater, come the day it opens. Especially in the South. Some Yankees up North will show up to gloat, I suppose. But most other people will find such a topic distasteful in these times. Mark my words. And also mark my words. That other big expensive MGM production will flop and be gone in a week and never heard from again. The Wizard of Oz. Have you read the original books?"

Karin shook her head. “But I heard about it. It’s a fantasy. Right? There were silver shoes and a yellow brick road going to places.”

“I saw pictures of it in a magazine and I got so mad. Damn I got mad!” She grabbed Carol’s behind, again, and pulled her tight.

“They modernized it all. It’s all art deco! It doesn’t have the charming look of the original illustrations at all that I loved so much when I was a little girl! And they say the lion and tin man and scarecrow are playing it like big loud vaudeville hams. That sounds so wrong. What does a bunch of old hammy Berlin Jews have to do with a fantasy place called Oz? I can’t imagine it working at all. And Judy Garland is just too old to play the part of Dorothy. She’s supposed to be a little girl. Judy has all grown up. A girl that old, playing that part, is embarrassing for her.”

Carol just nodded. She was old enough to starve in the streets but yet was a year younger than the actress that would play a little girl living with her Auntie Em.

Mama Gravy continued, “And Judy’s so modern �" so swing. I just can’t see it. I have nothing against Judy. I saw her past picture, Love Finds Andy Hardy, and it was a hoot. They all talked about how Lana Turner was the looker but Judy stole the show. But that was that kind of show.”

“Yeah, you can’t have romance on the yellow brick road.”

Mama Gravy sadly moaned. “I loved the books so much when I was little. I know it’s probably hard to do fantasy in the movies and get it all to come together, but you’d think MGM was trying to make it a big loud ugly mess just on purpose to remind us again how it knows how. I bet there won’t be a single moment where it feels magic. You’ll just see hammy old stars in front of art deco sets and then you’ll run home crying to your books.”

Carol said, “Something has to come out this year that’ll be good.”