Cinema: Gag Man

Grover Jones was a round, ruddy, bespectacled little man with a rim of reddish hair around his shiny bald head. Pounding up & down a room, swinging a long cigar through the air, he could tell the tallest tale in Hollywood. Inside the brick wall circling his two-acre property he kept a pony, a goat, 14 English sheep dogs, ducks, geese, chickens, ravens, down-&-out friends and relations, his father, his mother, his wife Sue. His profession was screenwriting, for which he received as much as $3,500 a week, $40,000 a script. He reached Hollywood from West Terre Haute, Ind. 27 years...

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