Clara Baskill’s Hollywoodland (#2)
By: Joe Shetina
Tags: Film, Hollywood, Movies, Old Hollywood, Fiction

Clara Baskill’s Hollywoodland (#2)

Reprinted from the Los Angeles Gazette: Monday, April 4, 1938

HOLLYWOOD — Tandem-Archer-Leahy Pictures has once again taken a box office slam with the new fright picture, “Call of the Werewolf.” The project is a meandering, disreputable jumble of celluloid unwelcoming to even the most ghoulish corner of the film audience. It’s 63 minutes — cut down from a reported 75 minutes — and every one of those minutes is sluggish as molasses. The only scary thing about this picture is that a man as smart and mindful of his money as Simon Leahy allowed it to be made in the first place. It’s a far, far cry from even the most rote fright pictures of only a few years ago.

“Call” is the fourteenth T-A-L release this year, and outside of the ongoing success of its Martian-themed serials with young audiences of questionable taste, it’s not a banner year for the studio. Last month, it failed to garner even one Academy nomination. A sorry state of affairs. However, word is the studio is looking to re-enter the western talkie boom of late with a picture described as “a stirring saga of frontier living.” The picture in question? “Caravan!” Whether the exclamation point is included for emphasis or out of desperation remains to be seen.

I have been accused of possessing a fatalistic perspective on the picture business. It’s just not so. It gives me no pleasure to announce the industry’s failures. As an upstart myself, I have a fondness for the rascals at Tandem-Archer-Leahy Pictures. And why shouldn’t I? From its beginnings as a Hungarian haberdasher’s passion project to one of the industry’s five most successful studios, the founding of T-A-L is one of Hollywood’s most endearing, all-American stories of success and triumph in the face of near-insurmountable odds. It’s too bad, then, that T-A-L’s on-screen stories haven’t been stacking up against their off-screen one.

LEMONT STAR IN WRECK

Lemont Brothers Lothario Maxim Greenleaf was involved in a collision at a Simi Valley intersection on Friday night. The 31-year-old “Merry-Go-Round” star was pulled from his crumpled automobile by emergency workers. He was unconscious in the wake of the accident, as were his two female companions. All three sustained cuts and bruises, but no serious injuries. A second car involved in the wreckage was turned on its side. One woman in that car is still in serious condition at a local hospital.

Though the cause of the wreckage has yet to be determined, Lemont has yet another public relations nightmare on its hands. Why can’t the studio’s publicity people get a handle on its rowdy young stars? What example does this set for the industry, not to mention America’s impressionable youth?

“THE BRITISH ARE COMING!”

Reports of a memo being passed around the Metro lot have struck up more than a few laughs. The heads of department for costumers and art directors are behind the memo, which simply says, “The British are coming. Plan accordingly.”

Could rumors that Metropolitan Pictures is expected to co-fund Frieling International’s Henry VIII epic be true? If so, the picture could see the light of day by fall 1939.

PREEMINENT’S STAR SEARCH

Preeminent has no shortage of bankable stars, yet the studio announced this morning they’re on the lookout for new ones. And they’re coming to a town near you!

Could your plucky young girl be the next “it girl”? How about your strapping young boy? Could he be the next swashbuckling swordsman of the silver screen?

Time will tell —and then I’ll tell you.

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Born Claire Luisa Braun on March 16, 1904 in Carbondale, Illinois, Clara Baskill dreamed of becoming as famous as the stars she would later cover in her syndicated column. However, after years dancing in the chorus and landing small character parts in the movies, she was barely making ends meet. She was becoming more renowned for stories of her famous co-stars’ onset behavior than she ever was for her own acting. These tall tales became the toast of Hollywood parties, soon becoming legendary enough for renowned newspaper publisher, Humphrey Douglas Bradshaw, to offer her a weekly gossip column in his Los Angeles Gazette newspaper.

At its height, Clara Baskill’s Hollywoodland averaged nearly 35 million readers. Hollywood acknowledged her as a direct conduit between stars and their adoring public. Baskill’s pile of cease and desists was as big as her pile of fan letters. From her typewriter, she made celebrities out of nobodies, ground stars into dust, and shined a light on a world whose glamor and intrigue rivaled anything it projected on a silver screen.

Baskill wrote for the Los Angeles Gazette, LA Magnifier, The Angeleno, and Medley. She also published five books over her nearly fifty-year career. She died on October 10, 1992, at the age of 88.