Cinema: Curious Native Customs

After a year's safari into darkest Hollywood, Anthropologist Hortense Powdermaker has emerged with a published account of her findings, Hollywood, The Dream Factory (Little, Brown; $3.50). On the basis of previous research among backward Melanesian natives, Dr. Powdermaker concluded that the denizens of Hollywood are even more primitive, more superstitious, more beset by anxieties than Stone Age tribesmen.

She was surprised to discover that the movie people generally lived, not on palatial estates, but in tidy suburbs resembling Baltimore's Roland Park and Cleveland's Shaker Heights. They proved excellent interviewees because "the level of...

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