(2 of 7)
The Search. Hollywood's busy talent scouts, like eunuchs seeking recruits for a vast harem, are still searching high & low—at drug counters and in dramatic schools, at debutantes' parties and in back alleys—for the girl with that irresistible appeal. The girls in the Hollywood harem today are, inch for inch, at least as voluptuous as their predecessors. But that jaded sultan—the U.S. public—has lately been turning his head away with a yawn.
In the massive array of promising eyes, perfect legs and pneumatic bosoms, he finds nothing that can quite match his favorites of yesteryear—Theda Bara, the archetype of the Vamp; Gloria Swanson, with her passion for spangles and feathers; Clara Bow, the original "It" girl; Greta Garbo, the incomparable Swede, still a legend after a decade off the screen; Jean Harlow, whose platinum-blonde petulance and provocative lisp still agitate nostalgic memories in thousands of aging males.
From Tallahassee to Timbuktu, they set the fashion in clothes, kisses, hairdos and seduction. For years, they were adored more fervently than Cleopatra or Jenny Lind. For years, they ruled the dreams of the world.
What happened to glamor, to oomph, to It?
Buiclcs & Fluff. Some cinemoguls and movie fans claim that there is such a thing as too much glamor: the public may have become bored with the endless succession of hopeful newcomers, as shiny, as well-curved, and as indistinguishable from their rivals as a fleet of new Buicks just off the assembly line. Says a Chicago movie executive : "TV, magazines and billboards give us so many big busts and split skirts that we feel at home with this kind of glamor. We like it, but nobody gets very excited about it." Moviemaster Cecil B. DeMille has a different answer: "Stars today are little fluffs of femininity put together by make-up men."
There is another reason, and perhaps the biggest of all: the life of the movie star, the nation's uncrowned royalty, has undergone some drastic changes.
Two decades ago Hollywood was Babylon cum Samarkand cum Coney Island. The mind swayed like a prop palm before a wind machine; reason lay limp on the cutting-room floor. Pola Negri walked her leashed leopard cub. through the streets; Bessie Love drove a lavender-colored limousine ; Marion Davies* brought a marble bridge from Italy to span her 80-ft., saltwater swimming pool; and Dolores Del Rio let it be known that she drank only from a golden chalice. Even discounting the pressagents' fevered imaginations, it was a wondrously gaudy existence.