Theodore Dreiser on Hollywood’s cheap sex story
Hollywood worships one Almighty
The journalist and novelist Theodore Dreiser has been called a great American writer or a generally bad writer, depending on the critic. He is most known today for his novels Sister Carrie, ranked by the Modern Library as 33rd of the 20th century’s 100 best novels written in English, and An American Tragedy. He was also an enthusiastic Communist. The quote is taken from an article titled "Theodore Dreiser picks the six worst pictures of the year” in the January 1932 issue of The New Movie.
Hollywood's industry represents millions upon millions of hard-earned money, pays salaries far more fabulous than those of general, king, scientist or artist, buys rights to literary masterpieces at figures in the hundred thousands, and what does it all come to? Merely the cheap sex story!
Hollywood has one Almighty it swears by. This is luxury, against which background sex flourishes. But luxury, the fashion parade, great halls, servants polishing the ladies’ toe nails, etc., etc., for these Hollywood stands; as for anything else — be it economics, science, politics, medical discoveries, the ordinary and yet so human and intense wear and tear of life, or what you will, it has no eye nor ear — the disdain, really of a drunken reveler.
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