Tinseltown Quotes

“All of which goes to prove that there is so much good in the worst of us and so much bad in the best of us that it ill behooves any of us to talk about the rest of us.”
― William J. Mann, Tinseltown: Murder, Morphine, and Madness at the Dawn of Hollywood

“She knew her mother was likely to blow her top like a geyser in Yosemite National Park, but Mary had stopped giving a damn one way or another.”
― William Mann, Tinseltown: Murder, Morphine, and Madness at the Dawn of Hollywood

“Democracy was wrong, Kahn declared, when “it countenances government commissions giving to endless innuendo and irresponsible gossip the place and the scope that belong to trustworthy testimony.”
― William J. Mann, Tinseltown: Murder, Morphine, and Madness at the Dawn of Hollywood

“he abhorred these self-righteous, self-appointed arbiters of morality. He called them “the Anvil Chorus,” pointing out that every new development in history had drawn the fear and suspicion of people like them.”
― William J. Mann, Tinseltown: Murder, Morphine, and Madness at the Dawn of Hollywood

“Yet Arbuckle’s fate didn’t rest with the entire public. It was decided in white, middle-class drawing rooms where the Federation of Women’s Clubs took their votes, and in church halls where ministers whipped their flocks into outrages over Hollywood.”
― William J. Mann, Tinseltown: Murder, Morphine, and Madness at the Dawn of Hollywood

“When the cops were unable to catch a man named James “Bluebeard” Watson, who’d married eighteen women and killed at least seven of them, Harris”
― William J. Mann, Tinseltown: Murder, Morphine, and Madness at the Dawn of Hollywood

“The industry could not be seen as pandering to the public’s lowest common denominator—”
― William J. Mann, Tinseltown: Murder, Morphine, and Madness at the Dawn of Hollywood

“In Hartford, Connecticut, after calls from religious organizations, theater owners pledged that Fatty’s face would never again be seen on their screens.”
― William J. Mann, Tinseltown: Murder, Morphine, and Madness at the Dawn of Hollywood

“Films were to be judged on their individual merits, the board said, “without any reference to the private life of the actors.”
― William J. Mann, Tinseltown: Murder, Morphine, and Madness at the Dawn of Hollywood

“They had come to toast Hays, their new “czar,” as the papers were calling him.”
― William J. Mann, Tinseltown: Murder, Morphine, and Madness at the Dawn of Hollywood

“then it is up to the public to patronize only those places that least offend its taste. A man may be imbued with the ideas of a vegetarian, but he can’t run a vegetarian restaurant successfully when all his patrons demand beef.”
― William J. Mann, Tinseltown: Murder, Morphine, and Madness at the Dawn of Hollywood

“white sheet draped over his head. And Peavey knew enough about men in white sheets to understand they were nothing but cowards and posers.”
― William J. Mann, Tinseltown: Murder, Morphine, and Madness at the Dawn of Hollywood

“Hays was thinking of Prohibition, “which had by no means produced the era of national sobriety its proponents had contemplated.”
― William J. Mann, Tinseltown: Murder, Morphine, and Madness at the Dawn of Hollywood

“Theater owners told horror stories of church ladies and civic reformers, many brandishing crucifixes as if to ward off vampires, barging into their offices and demanding they never again show Arbuckle’s films.”
― William J. Mann, Tinseltown: Murder, Morphine, and Madness at the Dawn of Hollywood

“The movies, once the nation’s happy diversion, had become a scapegoat for those who were frightened by the changes rocking American society since the end of the war.”
― William J. Mann, Tinseltown: Murder, Morphine, and Madness at the Dawn of Hollywood

“had taken it upon herself to sit through as many of the devil’s entertainments as she could tolerate, cataloging every sin.”
― William J. Mann, Tinseltown: Murder, Morphine, and Madness at the Dawn of Hollywood

“Their intention, clearly, was to beat the censors at their own game. If pictures had to be neutered, they’d rather do the castration themselves.”
― William J. Mann, Tinseltown: Murder, Morphine, and Madness at the Dawn of Hollywood

“I do not ask autocratic exclusion of films,” Crafts said, trying to seem less fanatical in the press, “but only such supervision as the Government gives to all other great financial interests.”
― William J. Mann, Tinseltown: Murder, Morphine, and Madness at the Dawn of Hollywood

“The film industry, Crafts charged, was in the hands of “the devil and 500 non-Christian Jews”
― William J. Mann, Tinseltown: Murder, Morphine, and Madness at the Dawn of Hollywood

“told King a very interesting tale”
― William Mann, Tinseltown: Murder, Morphine, and Madness at the Dawn of Hollywood

“Federal Trade Commission. Instead, he simply saw the fact that the Famous Players chief had had the courage and the decency to meet the exhibitors on their own turf, that he had walked”
― William Mann, Tinseltown: Murder, Morphine, and Madness at the Dawn of Hollywood

“From him to whom much is given, much is required.”
― William Mann, Tinseltown: Murder, Morphine, and Madness at the Dawn of Hollywood