The stories on "The Road to Hollywood" are based on research and interviews, but most are not actual quotations by the subjects. The art work identifies people by their occupation only, but, for the curious, following are the names:
On the stairs north of Hollywood Blvd:
“You've got to come to Hollywood,” they said. “Movies is
the third biggest business in the world. Safety razors is first, corn plasters
second, and movies third.” So I went. —Cowboy star (Will Rogers)
I drove out from Missouri with my luggage piled up to the back of my head and
all the way to the top on the passenger side. I couldn't see behind me,
but I was heading west, and that's all I needed to see. —Movie star (Brad
Pitt)
I parked my car in front of each movie studio, posed, and waited to be discovered.
That never happened, but eventually I got a manager. He turned me into a movie
star. —Actor (Rock Hudson)
I realized that if I didn't do something pretty soon I was going to be
digging ditches in Chicago for another twenty years. So I came out here. I got
work as a security guard for movie stars, and they helped me find an agent.
I was just about to give up when I got my first part. Now I've got an Oscar
nomination. —Actor (Michael Clarke Duncan)
On the main plaza:
My first job was holding up the Cowardly Lion's tail with a fishing pole
so it could tap in time to the music as he skipped down the Yellow Brick Road.
After a hundred takes, the director gave up on the idea. —Property master (Carl
Nugent)
I was working in an office in New York, and my boss said to me, “You're
not so good as a secretary; is there anything else you'd like to do?”
So I moved to L.A. and began taking acting lessons. —Actress (Catherine Keener)
My trainer thought I'd never make it because I was cross-eyed, but a producer
thought it would be an advantage. “I've never seen a cross—eyed lion,
and neither has the rest of the world,” he said. —Animal actor (Clarence
the Lion, a.k.a. Freddie)
I bought a camera in a pawnshop and eventually managed to become a Life magazine
photographer. At age fifty-seven I broke into films, becoming the first African
American to produce and direct a major studio movie. —Director (Gordon
Parks Sr.)
I told everyone who would listen how talented my children were. A letter came
from a studio saying, “Don't make a special trip, but if you're
ever in L.A., look us up.” I moved the family out immediately. —Stage mother
(Heart Phoenix)
I was in a coffee shop and I saw that the owner of a famous comedy club was
there too. I stood up on my chair and did my act right there. He invited me
to perform at his club. —Comedian (Andrew Dice Clay)
I came her from the Virgin Islands and got a job cleaning toilets. Eight years
later I cofounded a grip truck service. —Key grip (Jose Santiago)
The first host of American Bandstand got fired after coming to work drunk, and
I got the job. —TV host/Producer (Dick Clark)
My mom said, “Whatever you do, don't go to Hollywood,” so I moved
there right after college. My band got a gig in Santa Monica, but we got booed
off the stage, so I decided to try a solo career. —Musician (Weird Al Yankovic)
A producer saw me in a TV commercial and brought me out from Illinois. I did
a pilot, some guest shots, and at age eleven had my own show. —TV star (Gary
Coleman)
We met in a homeless shelter in Arkansas. Then we both ran for political office
and lost, so we decided to come out here and break into show business. —Street
performers (Elton and Betty White)
I went to film school, but I became known for the dinners I gave, not for my
camera work. Now I'm a producer of parties, with the guests and the food
as costars. —Caterer (Nick Grippo)
For years my musician dad had introduced me to script supervisors on sets, saying,
“My daughter wants to do what you do when she grows up.” When I was
old enough, he got me a job. —Script supervisor (Gloria Gottshalk Morgan)
They were looking for someone to play a Japanese soldier during World War II,
but all the Japanese American actors were in the army or had been placed in
detention camps, so I, a Chinese American, got the job. —Actor (Kam Tong)
As a kid, I worked for my dad's office-cleaning service. I'd practice routines
at night in the empty buildings. —Comedian/Actor (Chris Tucker)
My mother made me practice. For a long time I hated her for it. Now I'm
so glad she did; music is my life. —Session musician (Beth Elliott)
I was a sixteen-year-old girl in a sweater sipping a strawberry malt when a
guy came up to me and said, “How would you like to be in pictures?”
—Actress (Lana Turner)
In art school I couldn't stop myself from drawing clothes on all my nudes.
I realized I was more interested in the clothes. —Costume designer (Travis Banton)
I had been a nightclub comic for thirty-seven years when TV came calling. —Sitcom
star (Redd Foxx)
I wrote some jokes and sent them around, but it was almost impossible for a
woman to get hired back then. My first job was a secret, ghostwriting for a
guy with writer's block. —Gag writer (Dorothy Kingsley)
When I got to L.A. it was heavy metal, so I started playing lesbian bars in
the suburbs. A woman came in whose husband was a manager, but it took him a
while to get record execs to come out to the burbs to hear my songs. —Rock star
(Melissa Etheridge)
I left a successful career in Mexico and came here. I was so naive I called
the William Morris Agency and asked to speak to Mr. Morris. “He's
been dead for years,” they said. So I worked a bunch of jobs and tried
to improve my English. Three years later I got my first part. —Actress (Salma
Hayek)
I was still wearing my cop's uniform when I decided to audition as a stuntman.
The casting director looked worried, but when I told him I just wanted a movie
job, a wave of relief swept over his face. He hired me immediately. —Stuntman
(“Bad Chuck” Robertson)
I'd sneak up a hill near my house and watch drive-in movies through binoculars.
That's how I found my goal in life— to make the trashiest motion picture
in history. —Director (John Waters)
First I worked in the lab, dunking film in colored washes, then I was taught
to be a camera operator. Cecil B. DeMille said I invented the soft focus, because
everything I shot was blurry. —Director (Mervyn LeRoy)
Louis B. Mayer saw me in a film in Berlin and asked me to come to Hollywood
if I was willing to lose some weight. “We don't like fat girls in
my country,” he said. —Actress (Greta Garbo)
I got a telegram from an agent in Hollywood who was looking for little people
to play Munchkins in The Wizard of Oz. I don't know how he got my name.
I was just a teenager in Alabama. —Actress (Margaret Pellegrini)
I was a hatcheck girl in New York. A guy asked if I was an actress, and I said,
“Yes,” and he said, “I'm an agent in L.A.,” and I said,
“Oh, sure.” But he really was, and he got me my first couple of movie
roles, although I have a new agent now. —Actress (Gretchen Moll)
I was a welfare mother who got herself together and wrote a one-woman show that
made it to Broadway. —Movie star/TV host (Whoopi Goldberg)
I was teaching at UCLA when a producer called, looking for a student to score
a sci—fi movie. “I'll send my best student,” I said, but I sent
myself instead. —Compose (Paul Chiahara)
I went through a period of rejections, getting close on things but not getting
them, having no money, leeching off friends and losing lovers because they thought
I was a no-good bum. Eventually things got better. —TV star (David Duchovny)
A German director working in Hollywood asked me to come out from Chicago to
write a film on “zess.” I had no idea what that was but hopped on
a plane anyway. When I arrived, I realized that was how he pronounced “jazz.”
—Screenwriter (Philip Yordan)
I borrowed sketches from all the best students in my art school, then applied
for a job at Paramount. The head designer said he had never seen so much talent
in a single portfolio. —Costume designer (Edith Head)
I had no Hollywood aspirations, but one of my professors at Long Beach told
me I was joking around too much in class and I should go to a comedy club and
see if I could make those people laugh. —Comedian (Paul Rodriguez)
I don't know what brought me here or how I got into the movie business. All
I know is that every time I start a new film, I'm as excited as that twenty-year-old
kid who drove to California not knowing a soul. —Art director (Charles
Breen)
On
levels 3 and 4, above the main plaza:
I was a model but I hated it. I met a woman at a party who saw that I was fluent
in Spanish and English and said, “Have you ever thought of doing Spanish
TV?” Her husband was president of a network, and she took me in to audition
for the news. —TV host (Daisy Fuentes)
My best friend wound up with a phone number that used to be Don Rickles'.
People kept calling for Rickles. One day, a producer called. My friend talked
him into meeting with this great writer he knew. —Screenwriter (Marty Tenney)
My brothers and I were big in North Carolina when we were offered a five—year
contract in Hollywood. They got homesick on the way out and wanted to turn back,
but I wouldn't let them. —Musician (Lee R. Broome)
I posed as an extra and snuck onto the Warner Brothers lot. I got in to see
John Ford and tapped a message on his desk in Morse code. “What does it
say?” asked Mr. Ford. “Give the kid a break,” I replied. And
he did. —Actor (Nick Adams)
I couldn't make it as an actor in New York, so I came out to L.A. I didn't
have much luck until I saw a boxing match that inspired me to write a screenplay.
I refused to sell it unless the studio agreed to let me play the lead. —Actor/Writer/Producer
(Sylvester Stallone)
In my twenties I desperately wanted to be cool, but I soon realized it didn't
suit me. I decided that whatever cool people would do, I would do the opposite:
like living in the Valley and making that OK. That's when my career took
off. —Writer/Performer/Radio commentator (Sandra Tsing Loh)
I wangled a meeting with a big-time cinematographer. “You don't know how
lucky you are,” he told me. “I'm going to hire you.” —Cinematographer
(Steven Poster)
I came to L.A. with a band but soon realized I was better at the business side
of music. I wound up taking over the job of a recording exec who had rejected
my band. —A&R executive (Tripp Walker)
Hollywood was my launching pad to getting performing gigs all over the world,
and I'm glad I came, although my big recording break is yet to come. —Singer
(Patricia White)
I was a waitress in New Jersey who had written half a script. A customer turned
out to be a playwright, and he put me on a weekly writing regimen to help me
finish. —Sitcom writer (Diane Ruggiero)