Le Petite

have no doubt that most of them, also, would like to be much better writers than they are, would like to have force and integrity and imagination enough of theseto earn a decent living at some art of literature that has the dignity of a free profession. It will not happen to them, and there is not much reason why itshould. If it ever could have happened, it will not happen now. For even the best of them (with a few rare exceptions) devote their entire time to work which has nomore possibility of distinction than a Pekinese has of becoming a Great Dane: to asinine musicals about Technicolor legs and the yowling of night-club singers; to"psychological" dramas with wooden plots, stock characters, and that persistent note of fuzzy earnestness which suggests the conversation of schoolgirls inpuberty; to sprightly and sophisticated comedies (we hope) in which the gags are as stale as the attitudes, in which there is always a drink in every hand, a butler inevery doorway, and a telephone on the edge of every bathtub; to historical epics in which the male actors look like female impersonators, and the lovely femininestar looks just a little too starry-eyed for a babe who has spent half her life swapping husbands; and last but not least, to those pictures of deep social importin which everybody is thoughtful and grown-up and sincere and the more difficult problems of life are wordily resolved into a unanimous vote of confidence in theinviolability of the Constitution, the sanctity of the home, and the paramount importance of the streamlined kitchen.
Writers in Hollywood, Raymond Chandler 1945