Pastor, People’s Church, Minneapolis, Minn.
One night I went out from Los Angeles with my moral telescope to make
some observations in the movie firmament. Music was playing, but the Muse
of Music would never recognize it. In Collins’ Ode, Music was a “heavenly
maid,” played in Greece and was Wisdom’s aid, chaste and sublime—perhaps,
but not here. It was jazz gone drunk and crazy, to the great delight of
prodigal sons and daughters.
Through clouds of cigarette smoke I saw the movie stars. These “heavenly
bodies” have very earthly souls. Some were fixed stars at tables, others
falling into partners’ arms, and shooting stars were shooting love
glances at each other. Some other stars seemed votaries of Astarte, the
licentious goddess to whom a temple has been erected in Hollywood, where
I was entertained by a French countess, who regaled me with tea, fresh
cakes and a veritable Madame de Stael (not stale) vivacious conversation
on travel, music, art, literature and religion. Although she was French,
I fully understood her good English accent and gesture, as I did the
meaning of her charming sister who went to the piano and sang, “I love
you.” Morals and movies are not inseparable. Hollywood is the modern
Daphne Grove where the Seventh of the Ten Commandments is frequently
forgotten or erased.
Southern California, the “land of the flea,” is also an artists’
paradise. The paint most advertised is cosmetics. The dearest paintings
I noticed were those walking on the streets. The Angelenos are expert
painters of scenery and theatre signs, of auto bodies, and of their own
faces with liquor. But why is art necessary at all? They have climate,
and that divides the honor with charity in covering a multitude of sins.
Nature has placed all California artists in the shade by placing on her
easel the matchless pieces of sea, field and mountain. Practical art is
found in the “drawings” of gold ore from the soil and money from the
pockets of the speculators. The water color is irrigation that turns
the brown earth green. The “oil” is petroleum from which modern mining
masters are making millions compared with the price the oils of the old
masters bring. Murder is one of the fine arts of Los Angeles, promoted by
autos which assume the pedestrian has no rights and deliberately knock
him right and left and leave him bruised and bleeding. The trouble is not
so much wine as auto-intoxication. There is an auto to every thirteen
inhabitants, which may account for so many unlucky accidents. The auto
roads in the state are the finest in the world. They can’t be called
“rotten” even though they are made from decomposed granite.
Most attractive are the beaches near Los Angeles. Here caterpillar trams
crawl along, sidewalks which swarm with gum-chewers, popcorn-munchers,
gingerale-guzzlers, peanut-masticators, hawkers of red hot dogs, spitters
of tobacco, ice cream cone venders, stylish freaks and freakish styles,
nice and naughty men, good and bad girls, and roller skaters. I grew
dizzy at Ferris wheels, aeroplanes, rollercoasters, the plunge bath of
the great unwashed, pavilions of dirt, drink, dancing and dissipation.
Over all there hung a Cologne variety of smells. Couples were swinging
in pier dance halls to ragtime orchestras. There were high dives in
the water, and low dives on the street where the innocent were doped,
debauched and robbed. Noise was raised to the nth power. Instead of the
sweet sea breeze there was the strong aroma of popcorn and perspiration.
At the beach you discover many things Columbus never found in his
travels—peanut shells, dippy dippers, tin cans, can cans, tin horn
sports, human lobsters and jelly fish, shell games, gulls and gullibles,
papers, lunch boxes, bags, flasks, mermaids, mere men, kids with pails
and shovels, playmates, families, spoony couples, kelp, garters,
dead fish, fishermen, lines, nets, boats, cottages, hotels, resorts,
boardwalks, promenades, bare legs, arms, feet, busts, driftwood and
piers. Here one can find lost souls without exploring the shores of
Phlegethon, Cocytus and Avernus.
L. A.’s Elysium Park is like the classic one in one respect. When Aeneas
went through the Elysian fields all the objects were clothed in a purple
light—here it is the haze from innumerable autos whose exhausts wrap
everything in smoky pall and smell. The park is a good place to spend
hours with the Houris, and to keep it from being a Paradise Lost, one is
prohibited from spending the night there. Many enact here the myths of
the nymphs and satyrs. Holiday guests are often found “star-scattered” on
the grass, acting out the Rubaiyat.
There is only one “Lost” Angeles in all the world.
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