In the next pavilion we saw the effulgence of Kleig lights and the gilded set of the "Musketeer standard" type. The famous cinema actor, Fredric March, was standing in a camisole, stockings, and shoes with clasps. His unusually handsome, lustreless face was luminous in the shadows of the set.

This is what was going on in the pavilion at the moment—the light was being fitted to Fredric March. But since every effort is made not to fatigue a great actor, the light was being fitted to a stand-in. When everything is ready, then March will come forth to be photographed.

In another pavilion we saw the actress Bette Davis, whom our audiences know by the picture The Crime of Marvin Blake. She sat in a chair and in a low voice, but irately, was saying that in the course of ten days she could not find an hour in which she could have her hair washed. She had no time! The picture had to be "shot."

"I have to be photographed every day," she was saying in a tired voice while the habitual grin of a dazzling cinema smile was on her face.

In the expectation of being photographed, the actress looked with disgust, or perhaps rather with complete indifference, at the set, where under Kleig lights in front of the camera walked a man with a familiar face that tormented us. Where had we seen this second-rate actor-—in the picture Kidnappers (machine-guns and pursuits), or in the picture The Love of Balthazar (catapults, Greek fire), or was it in Mene Mene Tekel, Upharsin?

From the face of Balthazar, who was now being photographed in a top-hat and swallow-tails (picture of the type of Child of Broadway), it was evident at once that the work did not rouse the slightest vestige of enthusiasm in him. He was bored and disgusted with it.

This was exceedingly typical of every Hollywoodite who thinks at all. He disdains his work, thoroughly realizing that he plays nothing but trash. One cinematographist, showing us the studio in which he works, literally poked fun at all his pictures. Sensible people in Hollywood, and there are not a few of them there, simply moaned at that defilement of art which goes on there every day and every hour. But they have nowhere else to go, and there is nothing they can do about it. They curse their work, be they scenarists, directors, actors, or mere technicians. Only the bosses of Hollywood remain in good spirits. With them it is not art that matters, but the box office.

In the very largest pavilion was being photographed the scene of a ball aboard ship. Several stand-ins were crowded on a platform. The place that was being photographed was amazingly lighted. Hollywood studios have at their disposal a great"quantity of light, and they are not stingy about it. An intermission came in the photographing, the light was decreased, and the stand-ins, breathless from their dances, ran off into the half-lighted corners of the pavilion to rest and to talk. Girls in naval uniforms with medals and the epaulets of admirals now began to chatter loudly about their feminine affairs. Young men in white naval uniforms, with the stupid eyes of motion-picture lieutenants, were walking up and down the pavilions, stepping over the electric cables lying on the floor.

Oh, those resplendent motion-picture lieutenants! If grateful humanity were suddenly to think of placing a monument to the god of potboiling, it could not find a better model than the motion-picture lieutenant. When in the beginning of a picture the hero appears in I white tunic with a naval cap, set cockily on his head, it is safe, without a single qualm, to walk out of the theatre. Nothing sensible or interesting will happen in such a picture. He is the god of potboiling himself, joyful and empty-headed.

While we were looking over the decorations and the extras, suddenly we heard behind us a Russian voice—-such a good Russian voice, juicy, aristocratic—say:

"What do you say, Kolya, shall we go somewhere today?"

The other voice, in a junior captain's timbre, replied:

"And what shall we use for money, Kostenka?"

We turned around quickly.

Behind us stood two gentlemen in swallow-tails. The brownish make up covered their quite haggard faces. The stiff collars forced them to hold their heads up proudly, but there was despondency in their eyes. Alas! Kolya was no longer young, and even Kostya looked oldish with his numerous wrinkles. They have grown old here in Hollywood, these two who seemed apparently Vladivostok emigrants. It was no fun at all to play a nameless steamship gentleman in a dancing picture about the life of young idiots. Soon the light will be turned off and they will have to return these swallow-tails and the stiff collars to the local storeroom. All their lives they had to deal with storerooms, and so will it evidently be unto death itself.

A signal sounded, and the blinding light was on. The girls, the lieutenants, and the swallow-tailed gentlemen hurried to the stage.

We walked out of the studio, and half an hour later were slowly rolling along with the automobile flood which was making its way to Santa Monica to breathe the ocean air. The great motion-picture capital smelled of petrol and fried ham. Young girls in bright flannel trousers were busily walking the sidewalks. All the girls of the world congregate in Hollywood. Here the very freshest merchandise is needed. Crowds of those who had not yet become rising stars, beautiful girls with unpleasant, spiteful eyes, fill the city. They want fame and they are ready to do anything for it. Probably no place else in the world is there such a number of determined and unattractive beauties.

The cinema stars of both sexes (in America men also have the title of star) live on streets which lead to the ocean. Here we saw a man whose profession is in all probability inimitable. He alone represents this remarkable means of earning money. This man sat under a large striped umbrella. Beside him was placed the following bill-board:

Houses of motion picture stars.

From 9 A.M. until 5.30 P.M.

He would not show you the inside furnishings of these houses and not Gloria Swanson at her morning tea (they will not let him inside), but just on the outside, from the street. Here is the house where Harold Lloyd lives—and here is the house where Greta Garbo lives.

Although the business day was at its height, no one engaged the guide, and on his face was expressed an irrepressible disgust for his foolish profession and for American motion pictures.

Farther on, we saw a young man standing in the middle of the pavement. On his chest hung a placard which read:

I am hungry. Give me work.

No one walked up to this man either.

The vastness of the ocean, the steady wind that blew toward the shore, the tranquil pounding of the surf, reminded us that in this world there is still a life that is real, with real emotions, which do not necessarily fall within a set quantity of footage filled with tap-dancing, kisses and gunshots.

When we entered the lobby of our hotel, a mighty figure rose from a divan and came to meet us. Leaning on a cane, the figure came close to us, and in a stentorian voice said:

"Allow me to introduce myself. Captain Ivanov, a former White Guard."

The captain had a large, smiling face. He looked at us in a friendly manner with his little boarish eyes, and at once declared that he had not been engaged in politics for a long time, although as a matter of fact we had heard nothing about the captain even when he had been presumably occupied with them.

The captain seized us by our hands, sat us down on the divan, and at once, without wasting a single minute, began to talk. In the first place, he told us that it was he who had been entrusted with bringing to Siberia the famous Order of Denikin in which the latter placed himself under the command of Kolchak. Since we happened to recall a name other than his, we did not express any special surprise, in spite of the fact even that the captain was picturesquely telling us how he had carried the order around the world.