Like the actor, authority has faith in its false whiskers. But its deepest faith is in the human illusion. People will hang on to illusion as eagerly as life itself.

The factors that laid low so whooping and puissant an empire as the old Hollywood are many. I can think of a score, including the barbarian hordes of Television. But there is one that stands out for me in the post-mortem.... The factor had to do with the basis of movie-making: 'Who shall be in charge of telling the story.'

I have written a raucous valentine to a poet's dream and agony.

Chicago is a sort of journalistic Yellowstone Park, offering haven to a last herd of fantastic bravos.

For many years Hollywood held this double lure for me, tremendous sums of money for work that required no more effort than a game of pinochle.

The movies are one of the bad habits that corrupted our century.Of their many sins, I offer as the worst their effect on the intellectual side of the nation. It is chiefly from that viewpoint I write of them - as an eruption of trash that has lamed the American mind and retarded Americans from becoming a cultured people.

In Hollywood a starlet is the name for any woman under thirty who is not actively employed in a brothel.