Overview

Blaise Cendrars, one of twentieth-century France's most gifted men of letters, came to Hollywood in 1936 for the newspaper Paris-Soir. Already a well-known poet, Cendrars was a celebrity journalist whose perceptive dispatches from the American dream factory captivated millions. These articles were later published as Hollywood: Mecca of the Movies, which has since appeared in many languages. Remarkably, this is its first translation into English. Hollywood in 1936 was crowded with stars, moguls, directors, scouts, and script girls. Though no stranger to filmmaking (he had worked with director Abel Gance), Cendrars was spurned by the industry greats with whom he sought to hobnob. His response was to invent a wildly funny Hollywood of his own, embellishing his adventures and mixing them with black humor, star anecdotes, and wry social commentary. Part diary, part tall tale, this book records Cendrars's experiences on Hollywood's streets and at its studios and hottest clubs. His impressions of the town's drifters, star-crazed sailors, and undiscovered talent are recounted in a personal, conversational style that anticipates the ""new journalism"" of writers such as Tom Wolfe. Perfectly complemented by his friend Jean Guérin's witty drawings, and following the tradition of European travel writing, Cendrars's ""little book about Hollywood"" offers an astute, entertaining look at 1930s America as reflected in its unique movie mecca.

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9780520078079

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Reviews

French modernist Cendrars (1887 - 1961) provides a fitfully amusing account of the American movie industry circa 1936. That was the year the poet, novelist, journalist, and sometime filmmaker spent two weeks in Hollywood on assignment for Paris-Soir. The resulting book-length article (originally published in installments) is occasionally entertaining, as when it details non-encounters with stars: A roadblock prevents Cendrars from getting to William S. Hart's ranch; a surly gatekeeper at Paramount causes him to miss a lunch date with Charles Boyer; he passes but doesn't accost a furtive-looking Douglas Fairbanks in the rain. The conversation with Ernst Lubitsch about the star crisis in Hollywood. The Frenchman's resigned acceptance of the industry's capricious operating procedures can be endearing. In a chapter devoted to the difficulty of gaining entrance to the studios, for instance, he describes the M.G.M. gatekeeper turning away a mob of Japanese sailors: The number of people he was in the midst of executing when it came my turn to meet him fooded me with admiration. Cendrars visits the set of The Great Ziegfeld, where an overwrought production number reminds him, he jokes waggishly, of a Promethean scene in one of his own novels, a similar monument of plastic synthesis and of life's apotheosis. But discussions of economics and suicide, complete with statistical charts, are weird filler, and parts of the book are dated in an unenlightening way, such as a fake-amazed accounting of the phalanxes of technicians required to film an intimate love scene. The general effect is precisely what one would fear from 59-year-old specimen of Gallic whimsy produced for a newspaper: an unflaggingly arch tone that rapidly grows tiresome. The original illustrations, by Jean Guerin, are undistinguished. A curious period piece. (Kirkus Reviews)

Author Information

Blaise Cendrars (1887-1961), poet, novelist, essayist, cineaste, is a central figure in French modernist literature. In 1992 California published his Complete Poems. Garrett White has written on film/art for The Los Angeles Times and Premiere.

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