“The Trouble with Scarlett”

One of the more gratifying–and unexpected–reactions I’ve received from people who have read book #1 in my Garden of Allah series, The Garden on Sunset, is when they demand to know when the next book is coming out. It’s one of the biggest compliments a reader can pay a writer: “I care so much about your characters that I want to know what happens to them and I don’t want to have to wait!”

To which I usually wail, “I’M WRITING AS FAST AS I CAN!”

And so it is to those readers I am writing this post. It is a teaser blurb expanded from the single paragraph previously posted on my website.

Progress on The Trouble with Scarlett is coming along nicely. I recently finished the “This Is As Good As I Can Get It On My Own” draft and, at the wise advice of my editor, Meghan Pinson, I sought out a handful of advance readers to gather their thoughts and impressions. The manuscript is currently in their hands and I hope to have heard back from them by mid-May. That’ll give me a month and a half to continue working on it until July 1st which is when I hand it over to Meghan for pruning, primping, preening, polishing, and prettying. She’ll have it for the month of July and I’m giving myself a couple of months to crawl to the “Now Available For Sale!” stage. My projected release date is October 2012, give or take a nervous breakdown or Dove dark chocolate overdose. Or two.

In the meanwhile, here is a little more detail to keep you teased.

Book 2 in the Garden of Allah series

~oOo~

Summer, 1936: Gone with the Wind is released by first-time author Margaret Mitchell and becomes an international sensation. Everyone in Hollywood knows that Civil War pictures don’t make a dime, but renegade movie producer David O. Selznick snaps up the movie rights and suddenly the talk around dinner tables and cocktail parties across the country is fixated on just one question: Who will win the role of Scarlett O’Hara?

When aspiring actress Gwendolyn Brick finally gets her hands on the book, it’s like the clouds have parted and the angels are singing the Hallelujah Chorus. Only a genuine southern belle could play Scarlett and, after all, didn’t she spend her childhood listening to her mama’s stories of Sherman’s march and all those damned Yankees? After years of slinging cigarettes at the Cocoanut Grove nightclub, Gwendolyn finds a new purpose in life: to become the silver screen’s Scarlett O’Hara. But isn’t that the ambition of every other pretty Hollywood gal with a deep-fried accent? She knows she’s going to have to stand out bigger than a hoop skirt at a Twelve Oaks barbeque.

Marcus Adler finds himself the golden boy of Cosmopolitan Pictures, the vanity production company set up by William Randolph Hearst for his movie star mistress, Marion Davies. He’s written Return to Sender, which becomes Davies’ first-ever genuine smash hit and wins him a coveted invitation to spend the weekend at Hearst Castle. The kid who got kicked out of McKeesport, Pennsylvania, is now the guest of the richest man in America, rubbing shoulders with the likes of Myrna Loy, Winston Churchill, and Katharine Hepburn. But the trouble with flying high is that you have such a very long way to fall. When Marcus’ Hearst weekend turns into an unmitigated fiasco, Marcus finds himself sinking fast. He realizes he needs a new idea to sell the studios—real big and real soon—when the Garden of Allah hotel gains a new resident. F. Scott Fitzgerald arrives in Hollywood with a $1000-a-week contract at MGM but no idea how to write a screenplay. “Pleased to meetcha,” Marcus tells him. “We need to talk.”

When Selznick gives the nod to MGM’s George Cukor to direct Gone with the Wind, it’s the scoop of the year and falls into the lap of Kathryn Massey, the Hollywood Reporter’s newest columnist. But dare she publish it? All scoops are the exclusive domain of the Hearst papers’ all-powerful, all-knowing, all-bitchy Louella Parsons. Nobody in Hollywood has dared to outscoop Louella before, but isn’t it about time someone did? When Kathryn plunges ahead with her story, Louella retaliates low and dirty. Kathryn’s boss loses his nerve and leaves her dangling like a limp scarecrow in a summer storm. Then the telephone rings. It’s Ida Koverman, Louis B. Mayer’s personal secretary, and she has a proposition she’d like to make.

~oOo~

THE TROUBLE WITH SCARLETT is the second in a series of novels following Marcus, Kathryn and Gwendolyn as they leap and lurch, win and lose their way though Hollywood’s golden years. If you love Armistead Maupin’s Tales of the City books, you’ll want to get lost in The Garden of Allah.

~oOo~

www.MartinTurnbull.com

Martin’s Goodreads.com giveaway

For a while now, people have been suggesting to me that I get onto Goodreads. I was, like, Yeah yeah, I’ll get to it…that and the other 10,000 marketing opportunities that a newly-published author absolutely must must must do to spread the word.

And so I put it on my “I Must Get Around To Looking At That, No, Really I Must List” and left it there for months. One day, in a hour-long convulsion of marketing get-up-and-go, I registered on the site and even got as far as signing up as an author and listing The Garden on Sunset.

And then I did nothing about it for two months.

But this week, I finished the latest draft of book #2 in my Garden of Allah series, The Trouble with Scarlett, and needed a few days’ break from it, so I looked into what the hell I’d signed up for. Holy cow! What a great site!

There are lists of books like “Best Books of the 20th Century”, ” The Movie was BETTER than the Book”, and–this one made me laugh–”Dealbreakers: If You Like This Book, We Won’t Get Along.” There are also reviews, recommendations, book groups, discussion groups, quizzes, and events.

For someone like me–an historical fiction fan–finding this site has opened up shelves of new books and writers to try. It’s like giving the keys of the pharmacy to a speed freak. In fact, with so many new books that sound interesting, I’ve had to force myself to get back to my writing, otherwise it’ll be 2 o’clock in the morning before I think to draw breath again and wonder why all the lights are out.

And then I discovered something else on this site: the Goodreads Giveaway. This program allows authors to give away copies of their book to interested readers (read: potential new fans.) The author gets to chose how many books are given away and how long the giveaway lasts.

As a self-published author trying to get the word out about his novel, the relentless beating of the marketing tom-tom tells you over and over: Word of mouth is your most likely avenue of success so connect with potential readers wherever you can.

So what better place to do that than at a website that’s all about books and the people who like to read them?

Like, duh.

Okay, so I’m a million years late to this bandwagon, but I’m now on board and have just launched my first giveaway.

The giveaway dates are from April 01 to April 08, 2012

If you’re not already a member of Goodreads.com, signing up is free so what have you got to lose? And I’m giving away three copies so your chances to win are pretty good!

“The Garden on Sunset” (Garden of Allah, #1) – Giveaway

GOOD LUCK!

www.MartinTurnbull.com

A Hollywood Literary Salon

Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas Paris salon

When I hear the words “literary salon,” I think of Gertrude Stein’s Paris apartment crowded with Fitzgerald, Picasso, Hemingway and all her other Lost Generation pals talking art, philosophy and letters. A dozen or so years later and 6000 miles west, Alla Nazimova held similar salons in her movie star mansion at 8150 Sunset Boulevard. She gladly included fellow European ex-patriots and other well-educated folk around silent-era Hollywood in her weekly salons during which they’d cover all manner of subjects and sock away copious amounts of booze before (and after) Prohibition kicked in.

But I always thought of salons as events staged by other people in other times . . . until now. Social historians Kim Cooper and Richard Schave have started a monthly literary salon and are holding it at the most appropriate venue in Hollywood: Musso and Frank Grill which is Hollywood’s longest-running restaurant (opened in 1919.) During the 1930s and 1940s, Musso and Franks was a mecca for the town’s serious writers, attracting the likes of F. Scott Fitzgerald, William Faulkner, John O’Hara Dorothy Parker, Ernest Hemingway, Nathanial West, Budd Schulberg), and Dashiell Hammett.

Kim and Richard know of what they speak. They run a great tour company called Esotouric through which they do fascinating bus tours around L.A. focusing on true crime (their Black Dahlia tour is especially interesting). They also write a blog called The 1947project.

I was brought to their attention by a new friend of mine, Philip Mershon, owner of Felix in Hollywood Tours, who I’ve met through Facebook. We each post daily photos—I post old photos of Los Angeles, he posts old photos of movie stars—and started commenting on each other’s posts. Philip was one of the first readers of my novel, The Garden on Sunset, and was the first person to leave a (rave!) review on Amazon. Before I knew it, I was having coffee with him at the Audrey Café, an Audrey Hepburn-themed café just off Hollywood Boulevard with Philip, Kim, and Richard.

Dorothy Parker

It turns out that the theme of their salon for July 2012 is the Hollywood careers of F. Scott Fitzgerald and Dorothy Parker. Both of these legendary names were lured to Hollywood by the promise of tons of filthy lucre and met with varying degrees of success. Parker co-wrote the screenplay for 1937’s A Star is Born and a Jeanette MacDonald/Nelson Eddy vehicle, 1938’s Sweethearts. (I know! Dorothy Parker wrote the screenplay for a MacDonald/Eddy movie? REALLY???)

On the other hand, despite his $1000 a week MGM contract, Fitzgerald never really quite got the hang of screenwriting. His only screen credit was a Robert Taylor/Franchot Tone/Robert Young WWI picture, 1938’s Three Comrades. He took a shot at Gone with the Wind as well as half a dozen other pictures (including 1938’s Marie Antoinette and 1939’s The Women) but by then he was too mired in debt and alcoholism to really accomplish anything before dying of a heart attack in December 1940.)

F. Scott Fitzgerald

However, what Fitzgerald and Parker had in common was that they both stayed at the Garden of Allah Hotel. A-ha! thought Kim and Richard. Perhaps Martin could come along and set the scene before David Kipen (author of Los Angeles in the 1930s: The WPA Guide to the City of Angels) speaks about Fitzgerald, and Adrienne Crew from the Dorothy Parker Society West speaks about Parker.

“You better believe I could!” I replied, and then wondered how I would concertina the five years I’ve spent researching and writing about Alla Nazimova, the Garden of Allah, and my Garden of Allah novels into ten minutes. GULP! On the other hand, I have four months to winnow down my spiel. Come to think of it, I first have to come up with a spiel, and then I’ll have to winnow it down to a succinct albeit fleeting ten minutes.

If you’re able to make it, I’d love to see you there!

What? Literary Salon, hosted by LAVA – Los Angeles Visionary Association
Where? Musso and Frank Grill
6667 Hollywood Boulevard, Los Angeles, California 90028
MussoandFrankGrill.com
When? Monday, July 23rd, 2012, 6pm to 11pm
How much? $100 per person, includes dinner

www.MartinTurnbull.com

The Most Famous Slab of Concrete in the World

In a continuing series looking at locations where some of the scenes in my ‘Garden of Allah’ novels take place:

Grauman’s Chinese Theater

It’s hard to argue against the claim that Grauman’s Chinese Theater is the world’s most famous movie house. It’s been famous since it opened in the 1920s and is probably the most-visited tourist site in Los Angeles (outside of Disneyland.) But for all that fame, hardly anybody these days knows or remembers much about the guy who gave it its name.

Sid Grauman

Sid Grauman was born in 1879 to David Grauman and his wife, Rosa Goldsmith, a pair of theatrical performers. So showbiz ran through Sid’s veins, literally and from the get-go. When he was still a young man, his father took him to Alaska to prospect for gold during the Klondike Gold Rush (late 1890s.) That plan didn’t work out so well, but Sid noticed that newspapers were scarce and could command up to a dollar a piece. Grauman told a story about a storeowner who purchased a newspaper from him for $50. The shopkeeper then read the paper aloud in his store, charging admission to local miners. Grauman Life Lesson #1: People Willingly Pay Handsomely for Entertainment.

Sid and his father began organizing events like boxing matches, which paid them well and although they didn’t strike gold, their entrepreneurial activities made them a darn sight better off than most of the prospectors. Sid’s father’s sister became ill and he left the territory to care for her, leaving Sid in Alaska for a time. His parents settled in San Francisco and Sid joined them there in 1900.

It was in San Francisco that father and son entered the theater business. Before long, they opened the Unique Theater on Market St. in which those new-fangled curiosities, motion pictures, shared the bill with vaudeville acts. They then opened the Lyceum, giving Sid a wealth of experience on how to run theaters. Grauman Life Lesson #2: More Is Better.

The San Francisco earthquake of 1906 put a dent in Sid’s career, but not for long. The Graumans managed to cobble together surviving remnants: a projector, some pews from a destroyed church, and housed them all in a large tent out front of which the Graumans posted a sign: “Nothing to fall on you but canvas if there is another quake.” The reassuring sign must have done the trick because it kept them going, and the years following the quake, the Grauman theatrical empire continued to grow.

By 1917, the Graumans decided to relocate to L.A. They approached Adolph Zukor (who would go on to be the owner and founder of Paramount Pictures) convincing him to buy their San Francisco theaters and also to assist them with financing their theater business in Los Angeles.

In short order, they opened the Million Dollar Theater in downtown L.A. which opened with the premiere of The Silent Man (a William S. Hart picture) on February 1, 1918. A year after opening the theater, Grauman introduced “prologues” to the bill, which were live stage presentations designed to enhance the film that would follow.

Grauman's Egyptian Theater, Hollywood Blvd

Unfortunately, Sid’s father died in 1921, before he could see the results of their next project, the Egyptian Theater on Hollywood Boulevard, just down from the Hollywood Hotel. This was a time when the public was captured by all things Egyptian so it seemed like a good theme to go with. (This must have seemed an especially good choice when the tomb of Tutankhamen was discovered the next year, 1922.) For quite a while, it was some poor sap’s job to dress up like a pharaoh and climb onto the roof of the theater and announce to passers-by the times of the next showings.

The Egyptian opened on October 18, 1922 for the premiere of Robin Hood starring Douglas Fairbanks. The movie had cost a then-staggering $1 million ($200,000 more than it cost to build the Egyptian itself) so the producers wanted maximum publicity for its first run. Thus, they invented a whole new concept: the ritzy Hollywood premiere. (It’s hard, these days, to imagine a Hollywood without ritzy premieres.)

With the success of the Egyptian, Sid Grauman set his sights on topping himself and, in keeping with the public fascination in that era with international themes, he chose to go Chinese.

It took 18 months and $2 million to build Sid’s greatest triumph. Authorization had to be obtained from the U.S. government to import temple bells, pagodas, stone Heaven Dogs and other artifacts from China. Poet and film director Moon Quon came from China, and under his supervision Chinese artisans created many pieces of statuary in the work area that eventually became the Forecourt of the Stars. Most of these pieces still decorate the ornate interior of the theatre today. The theater opened May 18, 1927, with the premiere of Cecil B. DeMille’s The King of Kings. But without an accidental mishap, it might never have become the world-famous theater it has been for much of its 80-plus years.

Sid Grauman with Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks

There have been a number of stories about how the footprints and handprints came to be a tradition at Grauman’s Chinese, most of them fabrications designed to add to the allure of the legend, such as the one most commonly quoted about actress Norma Talmadge stepping into fresh cement as she got out of her car while visiting the theater.

The true story is that Sid walked across the theater’s forecourt and was scolded by the foreman for ruining the freshly-laid cement. Sid called Douglas Fairbanks, Mary Pickford and Norma Talmadge to come to the theater at once to add to his blunder. After all, who’s going to yell at Mary Pickford, right? However, the cement was nearly dry, and the impressions were too faint. In April, just three weeks before the completion of construction, Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks were invited back to formally place their hand- and footprints and signatures in the center of the theater’s forecourt. A few days later, Grauman had Talmadge make similar impressions next to those made by Pickford and

Map of celebrity prints in the forecourt of Grauman's Chinese Theater

Fairbanks. Knowing that the theater’s grand opening was to occur on May 18, 1927, Norma Talmadge scribbled that date above her signature instead of the actual date she made the impressions. Thus, a decades-long tradition was born which cemented (pun intended) the theater’s fame ever since. Grauman Life Lesson #3: Associate With Celebrities Whenever Possible.

Variations of the tradition started appearing, including

• the eye glasses of Harold Lloyd
• the cigar of Groucho Marx
• the magic wands of Harry Potter stars Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson and Rupert Grint
• the facial profile of John Barrymore (reflecting his nickname “The Great Profile”)
• the legs of Betty Grable
• the fist of John Wayne
• the knees of Al Jolson
• the ice skating blades of Sonja Henie
• the noses of Jimmy Durante and Bob Hope
• the hoofprints of “Tony”, the horse of Tom Mix, “Champion”, the horse of Gene Autry, and “Trigger”, the horse of Rogers
• the guns of Western stars William S. Hart and Roy Rogers

Marilyn Monroe & Jane Russell are immortalized outside Grauman's Chinese Theater

Marilyn Monroe and Jane Russell had their cement ceremony on the same day and wrote across the top of both squares: “Gentlemen prefer blondes!” (Not coincidentally, this was the name of the movie they both starred in which was opening the following month.) Marilyn dotted the “i” in her first name with a large rhinestone, but the gem was later chiseled out of the cement by an overzealous tourist and has since been replaced (a couple of times) with a glass chip. It is said that Marilyn proposed putting her bottom in the cement, and suggested that Jane Russell immortalize her famous top there as well but, predictably, that idea was nixed.

Of course, it helped that a very long list of movies held their premieres there. In 1939 over 10,000 spectators showed up for the world premiere of The Wizard of Oz, and in 1977, Star Wars began its ascent to the most successful motion picture to that date. In 1944, 1945, and 1946 the Academy Awards ceremonies were held at the Chinese Theatre, which is always an effective way to plant your name in the minds of the public.

The original box office of Grauman's Chinese Theater was in the middle of the forecourt (shown here in the 1940s)

In 1929, Sid Grauman sold his share to William Fox’s Fox Theatres chain, but remained as the theater’s managing director until his death in 1950. By then, his Chinese Theatre had become an icon of Hollywood and in 1968, it was declared a historic and cultural landmark in 1968. So well-known was its name that even when, in 1973, it was purchased by Ted Mann (owner of the Mann Theatres chain) and changed its official name to Mann’s Chinese Theater, hardly anybody called it that. It was Grauman’s Chinese Theater regardless of who owned it. In the wake of Mann’s 2000 bankruptcy, the theatre was sold in 2000 (to a partnership of Warner Bros. and Paramount Pictures).

Thankfully, in 2002, the original name was restored to the cinema palace as it damn well should because there can only ever be one GRAUMAN’S CHINESE THEATER.

Grauman's Chinese Theater, Hollywood Blvd (1957)

www.MartinTurnbull.com

Hooray for the Hollywood Hotel

In a continuing series looking at locations where some of the scenes in my ‘Garden of Allah’ novels take place:

Hollywood Hotel

Nowadays, Hollywood is littered with more hotels than Japanese tourists, but the earliest of Hollywood’s early days, there was only one hotel in the whole town. Its origins date back so far that Hollywood Boulevard wasn’t even called that yet. In 1903, it was still called Prospect Boulevard.

In 1901, the Los Angeles Pacific Boulevard and Development Company was incorporated and counted, among the many investors, such notables as Harrison Gray Otis, editor of the Los Angeles Times, and Hobart Whitley a local real estate developer (after whom Whitley Heights is named.) The company bought a 60-acre parcel of land of the old Rancho La Brea (which is where La Brea Ave gets its name) from Henry Hancock’s widow (which is where Hancock Park gets its name).

Hollywood Hotel on opening day, 1903

Hotel Hollywood (as it was named then) opened in February of 1903 with 25 rooms. Within the space of just one year, it changed hands twice and in 1904 the Hollywood Hotel Company bought it for $46,000. One of the larger stockholders was a Myra Hershey, a wealthy member of the Pennsylvania chocolate candy bar family. She’d been visiting Los Angeles and hired a horse and buggy all the way from Los Angeles (ie downtown L.A.) to see the hotel she’d seen advertised for in the L.A. Times. She must have had a good time there because she bought the place, and added another fifty rooms. By 1907, Miss Hershey had acquired all the stock of the Hollywood Hotel Company, and in 1908, she added an additional fifty rooms, bringing the total number to 125.

Streetcar on Prospect Blvd (later Hollywood Blvd), 1905

The place wouldn’t have been hard to spot back then. The film industry was still but a gleam in the eyes of would-be starlets; shady movie people had yet to invade the god-fearing town of Hollywood. A street car line had been installed, but riders along Prospect Boulevard looked out mainly on pepper trees and fields of beans. However, by the 1910s, that had changed and the streets of Hollywood were positively overrun with loose-living actors, maniacal directors, and cameramen who seem to think that they can plop their camera down any old place and assume they have the right of way. (Some things never change.)

This was a time when actors were considered the lowest denizens of the social ladder and weren’t even allowed to remain overnight in the city of Hollywood. (That wouldn’t change until 1917 when movie moguls Jesse Lasky and Samuel Goldwyn built the Hilllview Apartments at 6533 Hollywood Boulevard, now the Hudson Apartments.) However, they were allowed to socialize and so they were naturally drawn to the classiest joint in town, and the hotel became the social center of early Hollywood.

Rare colorized photo of the Hollywood Hotel showing its signature red roof.

As the movies took off, so did the name of Hollywood, and the fame of the Hollywood Hotel spread right along with it. Giants of the industry first stayed at the hotel, such as Jesse Lasky, Carl Laemmle, Louis B. Mayer, Harry Warner and Irving Thalberg. Producers, directors, writers and technicians held conferences on the broad verandas. The former shoe salesmen and laundresses who these people fashioned into movie idols started to attend the dances held every Thursday night in the crystal-chandeliered ballroom. Before Myra could say “Hershey’s Kiss”, her hotel was considered “the” place to be seen. To identify where certain people regularly sat and dined, the hotel had stars with the names of celebrities painted on the ceiling above their tables and dubbed it the “Dining Room of the Stars.”

Among the scores of movie stars who stayed at the Hollywood Hotel was Rudolph Valentino, who lived in room 264; and met his first wife, Jean Acker, in the hotel; they were married there in 1919 and spent their honeymoon in his room.

Louella Parsons takes to the airwaves on CBS's "Hollywood Hotel" radio show.

In October 1934, the hotel itself went from being famous in Los Angeles to being famous across the country when movie columnist, Louella Parsons, put film stars on the radio for the first time and announced, “This is Louella Parsons broadcasting from the Hollywood Hotel.” It was big news because it was the first major radio network show to be broadcast from the West Coast. (Radio was then a very New York-centric industry.) The Hollywood Hotel radio show further extended Louella Parsons’ already-powerful reach. The hour-long show was hosted by Dick Powell who, at that point in his career, was still in chorus boy-mode in Warner Brothers’ musicals. It was a mixture of songs (usually the most popular tunes at the time, sung by Frances Langford), Hollywood gossip by Parsons, and a 20-minute adaptation of a current film release. The premiere episode featured Imitation of Life starring Claudette Colbert who, like the stars who appeared on the show for the next four years, were required to perform for free. If they protested, they ran the risk of running afoul of the most powerful female journalist in America. It was simply easier to just show up and do the show. Kudos to Ginger Rogers, Katharine Hepburn and Greta Garbo who refused, but brave actors like them were few and far between.

Hollywood Hotel movie (1938)

Naturally, the radio show became a movie. In 1938, Warner Brothers released a Busby Berkley-directed piece of hokum called Hollywood Hotel featuring a plot about a saxophonist from Benny Goodman’s band. It starred Dick Powell and marked the feature film debut of Louella Parsons who was, stiff, stilted and self-conscious. However, the biggest thing to come out of this movie was the hit song performed right at the beginning. The movie, like the radio show, may have been forgettable, but it’s hard to imagine any of Hollywood’s history without its theme song: Hooray For Hollywood.

 

By then, Myra Hershey was long gone (she died in 1930) and she deeded the hotel to her heirs, who later sold it in 1947. By the 1950s, the hotel was run down, its former glory long faded away. In 1955, the southeast portion of the property was sold to First Federal Savings and Loan of Hollywood, and in August, 1956, the old Hollywood Hotel was razed and the 12-story First Federal building was erected on the northwest corner of Hollywood Blvd. and Highland where it stood until 1998. It was razed to make way for the Hollywood and Highland shopping center.

So, if you’re ever in L.A. and are on Hollywood Boulevard—perhaps visiting Grauman’s Chinese Theater next door to Hollywood and Highland—you might want to picture Rudolph Valentino dancing the tango with Myra Hershey. As you do, put your lips together and whistle softly to yourself “Hooray for Hollywood” because without the Hollywood Hotel, we might never have had Hollywood’s National Anthem.

www.MartinTurnbull.com

Café Montmartre – where Hollywood nightclubbing started

In a continuing series looking at locations where some of the scenes in my ‘Garden of Allah’ novels take place:

Café Montmartre

It would be easy to assume that Hollywood was always a wild and crazy town with sidewalks packed shoulder-to-shoulder with determined hedonists looking for a big night out that was so good it was doubtful that anything would be remembered about it the next morning. While that’s long been the case, it hasn’t always been that way.

The city of Hollywood was established by a couple of plain-living Christians by the name of Harvey and Daeida Wilcox. The town they set out to establish was a pro-temperance, anti-booze, sedate burg, and so the townfolk were none too pleased when those loose-living film folk started to invade their streets kicking up no end of ruckuses with their cameras and make up and all that there play-acting.

The sign makes it perfectly clear who's welcome here and who ain't.

Mind you, they weren’t alone in denouncing these vagabonds. Genteel society all agreed that actors belonged on the bottom of the social ladder, right there alongside dogs. For the first two decades of the 20^thcentury, actors weren’t even allowed to stay overnight in the city of Hollywood. No sirree! Those ne’er-do-wells and scallywags were most certainly not welcome to spend the night. They were all required to leave the city—preferably by sundown—which meant they had to pack up their things and return to what we now refer to as downtown Los Angeles.

Hillview Apartments, Hollywood

That all changed—as things inevitably must—when movie moguls Jesse Lasky and Samuel Goldwyn built an apartment complex that would cater specifically to the acting community. In 1917, at 6533 Hollywood Boulevard, the Hillview Apartments (now the Hudson Apartments) were built. As far as the locals were concerned, it probably all went downhill after that–these invaders were neither accustomed nor inclined to go to bed when the sun went down. Well, not alone, at any rate. Once their work was done (if you can call that ridiculous mugging for cameras “work”) these people were looking for somewhere to go and spend an evening having a good time and, quite frankly, the genteel tea-dances at the Hollywood Hotel on the corner of Hollywood and Highland just wasn’t going to cut it. Cue entrance of Adolph “Eddie” Brandstatter.

Brandstatter had worked in Paris, London and New York, but by 1920, he was managing the Sunset Inn in Santa Monica. Sympathetic to the bohemian tastes of actors, he welcomed them on Wednesday nights, hosting the Photoplayers’ Frolics, (a photoplayer was an actor for the movies, a step down from the already lowly stage actor.) He extended credit to many future stars, earning their loyalty which they promptly showed by following him to his newest venture.

Cafe Montmartre, Hollywood Blvd

He rented the second floor at 6763 Hollywood Boulevard, just down from the Hollywood Hotel and, in January 1923, he opened the doors to Hollywood’s very first nightclub, the oh-so-swanky Café Montmartre.  You knew it was swanky because of the food. Brandstatter was French and instinctively knew that anything French was perceived as classy, so he dreamed up a quasi-French Continental cuisine, thereby helping to establish the sort of menu that would dominate upscale restaurants in L.A for decades. And because he also knew that his crowd often came from working class backgrounds, he also offered a selection of local favorites — borscht, enchiladas, mince pie, chicken burgers (a particular favorite of Marlene Dietrich), and the house specialty: Spaghetti Tetrazini. He also introduced the concept of the hot and cold buffet to L.A.

But this was also Prohibition and Brandstatter knew that plush decorations, a first-class band, and a hot buffet weren’t going to keep the crowd coming back so he kept a bootlegger on the premises in case his thirsty patrons found that they’d drunk the contents of their hipflask dry.

Dinner and dancing at the Cafe Montmartre, Hollywood Blvd

And then there was dancing. Of course there was dancing. This was the 1920s and everybody was dance-mad! If you ran any sort of eatery above the ‘diner’ level and you didn’t have dancing, you were sunk. No naturally, Hollywood’s first nightclub had a spacious dance floor and orchestra. Not that the crowd needed much encouragement, but Brandstatter organized dance contests that quickly became legendary. Rudolph Valentino, still on his way up from obscurity, won the tango contests, which probably helped his rise to become the world’s first screen sex symbol. On nights when the Charleston and the Black Bottom were contested, the winner was usually the attention-hungry (and probably, at this point, the just plain hungry) Joan Crawford. (She also frequently won contests at the Cocoanut Gove at the Ambassador Hotel on Wilshire. Hey, a girl has to eat.)

Joan Crawford, late 1920s

The ads for the Montmartre described it as “…the center of Hollywood life, where everybody worthwhile goes to see and be seen” which became a self-fulfilling prophesy. Lines started appearing down the block that the Montmartre was a place where you could see your favorite movie star in person, especially when the queen of the gossip columnists, Louella Parsons, started showing up on a regular basis and would spend her night table-hopping in search of spice and scandal.

Afternoons were also busy with the ladies-who-lunch crowd. But even lunching ladies like to dance, so Brandstatter featured a “bachelors’ table” of good-looking men who were available to dance with any lunching lady who felt like cutting a rug.

Oh yes, it was all happening here, day and night, at the Café Montmartre. But naturally, it couldn’t hold on to its claim as the only nightclub in Hollywood. Soon other places followed suit and all those fun-chasing film folk had no end of choices about where to spend an evening. But it all started someplace and that place was the Café Montmartre.

www.MartinTurnbull.com

Say Goodbye to Hollywood

In my other, non-authoring life, my partner and I run a Walt Disney collectibles store. Fantasies Come True has been open for 32 years, so we’ve gained a reputation for knowing what the value is of, say, that old Mickey Mouse marionette which has been sitting up in Aunt Eliza’s attic since Eisenhower was in office. Every now and then we’ll get a phone call asking us what the value might be of something they came across when clearing out ol’ Eliza’s attic.

These days, the collectibles market is largely an Ebay-led world. The value of that old Mickey Mouse marionette can be defined as either “Whatever it, or something like it, got on Ebay last week.” Or, to put it another way, “Whatever someone is willing to pay.”

As vague and elastic as that definition is, when it comes to Mickey marionettes, Tinker Bell vases, and Bambi snowglobes, we’re talking about a definable thing. It’s in a definable condition, of a definable size, of a definable character, made in a definable year with definable materials.

This past week, however, I found myself having to evaluate something far less tangible, far less palpable: the value of my writing.

For the past couple of months, I’ve been talking with a film producer. He approached me just as I was finishing the final edit of book 1 in my Garden of Allah series, The Garden on Sunset. He’d discovered the existence of the Garden of Allah hotel, and thought it would make a great setting for a TV show. So I sent him an advanced copy of the book, which he loved. Then I sent him the 9-book synopsis I’d written back when I was querying my way through 46 literary agents. He loved that too, and was very keen to move forward, which meant acquiring the screen rights in order to repackage the story for television.

Through this process, I was excited at the thought that I might see my work on the screen but, knowing how very hard it is to get a show on the air, was also not exactly about to pop a lung from holding my breath.

Then an email arrived from him listing the nine bullet points of the offer he was putting on the table. Wow, I thought, he’s actually making me a firm offer. So, he’s not just talk, after all. This might actually happen…?

Then I studied the offer he and his lawyer had put together. He assured me that it was a fair offer “given the various factors in play here.” By that, I had to assume he meant that as I was not a traditionally-published author with a proven track record, I couldn’t command Grisham-level advances. And for I all knew, maybe he was right. I’d never had Hollywood come knocking on my door before.

He was asking for the rights of all nine books in the series, which I thought was fair enough. He’d read the synopsis and knew where I’m planning to go with this series, so it was understandable that if he was going to pitch a multi-season TV show, that he’d want the rights to all the books, regardless of whether I’d written them yet, or not.

But the amount he was offering for all nine books seemed surprisingly, disappointingly, and typically low. But there was a definite offer on the table with a definable dollar amount attached, and I realized that my writing had become a Mickey Mouse marionette. I was sitting on one side of the table with a “thing” and he was sitting on the other side with a pile of dough and willing to pay me for it.

That was when the questions erupted. Was it enough? Was it a fair market offer? Was it commensurate with all the time I’d spent researching, drafting, rewriting, editing and proofreading? Was it the only offer like this I might ever get? Is a bird in the hand worth two in the bush? Was this just an opening offer from which he expected me to negotiate?

It forced me to think about how much my writing is worth. And my time. And my creativity. And my inspiration. And my hopes. I was being asked to put a dollar value on an intangible and there’s no Ebay for that. No Value Assessment for Dummies.

I read a lot of biographies and find it endlessly interesting to learn how lives can take a turn down rough and dark roads, or be elevated to mountaintops out of just one decision. I didn’t want to be the guy who turns down a great opportunity through misplaced ego or unchecked greed. Nor did I want to be the person who, six months later, sits up in bed and cries out, “D’oh! What the hell was I thinking signing such a crappy deal like that??!!”

So I put the word out among friends who might know someone who might know a lawyer or agent who could tell me, at least on the surface of the 9-point email, if this offer was anything resembling a good deal. I ended up talking with half a dozen informed people and the consensus was universal: It was a great deal…for him. For me? Not so much. The deal was crap and I’d be a fool to go anywhere near it

While it was flattering that someone wanted to slide a pile of money across the table at me for my work, it’s not very flattering if they want to pay so little.  So I sent the guy a nicely-worded email turning down his offer. I fully expected him to come back to me with “Let’s talk about this some more.” or “Let’s negotiate.” or “Make me a counter offer!” or “Give me a day or so and I’ll see what I can come up with.” But no. Five minute later I got an email saying, “Thanks for getting back to me.” and that was the end of that. Apparently my work is terrific…as long as it can be land-grabbed for cheap.

This whole experience served to remind me why I started writing in the first place. I write because I like to write. It feeds me, it inspires me, and it fulfills me. I write because not writing isn’t a viable option. However, if, as a result of that, some Ray Bans-wearing, beamer convertible-driving, tennis-tanned Hollywood producer recognizes the potential to repackage my work into some other format, and values it enough to make me a decent offer for it, then I would be a fool to knock him back. But for now, I think I’ll take my chances with those two birds in the bush. Maybe one of them will be a Mickey Mouse fan.