If you have ever wondered what made Hollywood the Sin City of the world during the 1920s and how it finally cleaned itself up, this book will reveal some of the startling answers. Why is it that Hollywood stars, who seem to have everything -- money, fame, love -- find it necessary to take to the needle, booze, and the "dolls"? What is it about the "town" -- the industry -- that uses up talent as if it were some kind of stone object, without feelings, emotion and driving ambitions, which finally is responsible for the destruction of its most important products? Is it the town or the touch of "talent" that drives the "beautiful people" towards escape through fast sex, wild parties, and the "happy pills"?
Robert Augustine Ward "Doc" Lowndes was an American science fiction author, editor and fan. He was known best as the editor of Future Science Fiction, Science Fiction, and Science Fiction Quarterly, among many other crime-fiction, western, sports-fiction, and other pulp and digest sized magazines for Columbia Publications. Among the most famous writers he was first to publish at Columbia was mystery writer Edward D. Hoch, who in turn would contribute to Lowndes's fiction magazines as long as he was editing them. Lowndes was a principal member of the Futurians.[1] His first story, "The Outpost at Altark" for Super Science in 1940, was written in collaboration with fellow Futurian Donald A. Wollheim, uncredited.