From Stranger and Friend. The Way of an Anthropologist by Hortense Powdermaker. New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 1966.

page 209

The study of Hollywood grew out of my sociological interest in movies, which had begun in Mississippi. After I returned, I could not forget the comments I had heard there about movies. Both whites and Negroes had seemed to look at them as "a slice of life," or in anthropological terms, as culture patterns.

I wondered about the reactions of other audiences and, accordingly, my students in a class on field work methods did an exploratory study in a low-income housing project in Long Island City. We gave tickets to a number of its adult residents to see selected movies in a neighborhood theater, and then interviewed them. The results indicated that the audience tended to be critical of the "truth" of those parts of a film which touched their experience, but to accept as . true" what was outside of it, such as a tale of a successful girl artist and her two rich boy-friends. This study and another smaller one strengthened my original impression from the comments on movies I had heard in Indianola, namely, that unsophisticated and relatively uneducated people viewed the movies more or less as representations of real life.

What were the culture patterns in movies to which these people were being exposed and which they were taking seriously? Always a movie fan, I now became an anthropologist in the theater, taking notes on certain films which I later translated into terms of culture patterns. Occasionally, I was lucky enough to see an American and a foreign movie with the same or similar themes and to compare them.

For some time this interest was only an avocation. Eventually it became more serious. In 1939 the Mississippi book had been published and in 1944 another on prejudice was published. World War 11 was just over, and I no longer was under the pressure of two jobs: one at Queens College and the other

page 210

(two days a week) at Yale University in its Army Specialized Training Program for the southwest Pacific. A publisher asked m to do a new book on the race problem. I was not interested. 'What am I interested in?" I asked myself. "Movies," was the answer.

I planned a content analysis of them. Since time for research was limited by a rather heavy teaching schedule, I needed a small grant to buy a tape recorder and to employ a typist. Although not sure that the new interest fell within the discipline of anthropology, I wrote to Paul Fejos, director of The Viking Fund (later The Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research), describing the project briefly. He answered immediately and asked me to come and see him.

I did not know until that first visit that his many-sided career in medicine, archaeology, and anthropology had also included his being a theater director in Europe and a motionpicture director in Hollywood. In 1928 he had made a distinguished film, "The Last Moment." One of the most creative and imaginative people I have ever met, he immediately saw possibilities in the movie project that had not occurred to me. He told me that I could not possibly understand movies as part of our culture unless I knew the social-psychological milieu in which they were made. As I later learned, his thesis was correct. He suggested that I go to Hollywood for six months. Accordingly, I submitted such a project to the Fund and was fortunate in receiving a grant. The original plan was to write a book on movies) in which Hollywood would be either one section or a theme running throughout.

I arrived in Hollywood in the beginning of July, 1946, and stayed one year. During the first month the department of anthropology at the University of California in Los Angeles invited me to teach during the coming academic year. (A new appointment had not materialized. I accepted the position on a half-time basis, teaching only familiar courses, because this permitted an extension of the original plan for a six-month study to a year. Being a visiting professor at U.C.L.A. was likewise a useful sanction for the role of anthropologist, a new one in Hollywood.

Much of the Hollywood of 1946-47 has gone. Then it was still controlled by powerful and passionate personalities in the

page 211

front offices of major studios. But there were new trends pointing to changes; these I studied, too. During the year a book on Hollywood took shape and the original plan of a book on movies, of which Hollywood would be only a part, was shelved.

Today I am critical of the Hollywood field work, more so than of any of my other field experiences. Hindsight tells me that the problems were formidable because of inherent difficulties in the situation, and because of certain patterns in my personality. A discussion of both may be as useful, if not more so, as that of more or less successful field research. Although the sociological and psychological aspects are, of course, interwoven, they are discussed separately.

This section of the book has been the most difficult to write. it is not easy to unravel the tangled threads of an exceptionally complex personal and social situation which occurred almost twenty years ago. Even more important is the fact that Hollywood was the only field experience in which I made no notes of my personal reactions. This, in itself, is significant. I was not the functioning feeling, as well as thinking, human being that I was in other field research. Feelings were muted. I saw myself as an objective scientist.

(two days a week) at Yale University in its Army Specialized Training Program for the southwest Pacific. A publisher asked me to do a new book on the race problem. I was not interested. 'What am I interested in?" I asked myself. "Movies," was the answer.

I planned a content analysis of them. Since time for research was limited by a rather heavy teaching schedule, I needed a small grant to buy a tape recorder and to employ a typist. Although not sure that the new interest fen within the disci-pline of anthropology, I wrote to Paul Fejos, director of The Viking Fund (later The Wenner-Gren Foundation Anthropological Research), describing the project briefly. He answered immediately and asked me to come and see him.

I did not know until that first visit that his many-sided career in medicine, archaeology, and anthropology had also included his being a theater director in Europe and a motion-picture director in Hollywood. In 1928 he had made a distinguished film, "The Last Moment." One of the most creative and imaginative people I have ever met, he immediately saw possibilities in the movie project that had not occurred to me. He told me that I could not possibly understand movies as part of our culture unless I knew the social-psychological milieu in which they were made. As I later learned, his thesis was correct. He suggested that I go to Hollywood for six months. Accordingly, I submitted such a project to the Fund and was fortunate in receiving a grant. The original plan was to write a book on movies, in which Hollywood would be either one section or a theme running throughout.

I arrived in Hollywood in the beginning of July, 1946, and stayed one year. During the first month the department of anthropology at the University of California in Los Angeles invited me to teach during the coming academic year. (A new appointment had not materialized. I accepted the position on a half-time basis, teaching only familiar courses, because this permitted an extension of the original plan for a six-month study to a year. Being a visiting professor at U.C.L.A. was likewise a useful sanction for the role of anthropologist, a new one in Hollywood.

Much of the Hollywood of 1946-47 has gone. Then it was still controlled by powerful and passionate personalities in the

page 211

front offices of major studios. But there were new trends point-ing to changes; these I studied, too. During the year a book on Hollywood took shape and the original plan of a book on movies, of which Hollywood would be only a part, was shelved.

Today I am critical of the Hollywood field work more so than of any of my other field experiences. Hindsight tells me that the problems were formidable because of inherent diffi-culties in the situation, and because of certain patterns in my personality. A discussion of both may be as useful, if not more so, as that of more or less successful field research. Although the sociological and psychological aspects are, of course, inter-woven, they are discussed separately.
This section of the book has been the most difficult to write. It is not easy to unravel the tangled threads of an exceptionally complex personal and social situation which occurred almost twenty years ago. Even more important is the fact that Holly-wood was the only field experience in which I made no notes of my personal reactions. This, in itself, is significant. I was not the functioning feeling, as well as thinking, human being that I was in other field research. Feelings were muted. I saw myself as an objective scientist.

Page 213

The first difficulty I encountered in Hollywood was situational. When I left my apartment, on foot or in a car, I could not per-ceive a community. Hollywood was not a structured geograph-ical locale; studios and homes were spread for many miles in the sprawling city of Los Angeles, which I thought ugly. In both Lesu and Indianola, the communities were definite, and it had been relatively easy to observe constantly and participate in their life. Experiencing the culture in each had been con-tinuous and escape had been difficult. This kind of constant and seemingly casual observation was not possible in Hollywood.

Another difficulty was that, as far as I knew, no comparable research existed to serve as a model for the study of Holly-wood. The hypothesis underlying the research was that the social structure of Hollywood was an important determinant in the content and form of the film. The problem narrowed to an examination of the continuing process which underlay the making of a film and the study of the human roles necessary to that process at any one point. This approach was quite different from that of the study in Lesu, in Mississippi, and later in Northern Rhodesia (and in most anthropological research), in which the focus was on a network of multiple roles. In the Hollywood study, the roles were segmented, and research was limited to their interplay at specific points in the making of a movie.

Without definitive research models, my methods were frequently trial and error. The basic technique was the inter-view. I bad arrived with a few letters of introduction, some of which were helpful, and in the beginning I met anyone and everyone who was available. Several were influential people,

page 214

Who, fortunately, became interested in the project. News ( their helpfulness-too informal to be called sponsorship) spread rapidly via the Hollywood grapevine and opened doors for interviews. The grapevine was as effective, or more so, in Hollywood as in smaller and more homogeneous group If at any time I had thought of it, and had been able to trace the paths in the maze through which gossip and rumors circulated, the results might have been illuminating. Gossip is, of course, a universal in all societies. But the attention given t( the gossip columnists in the two daily papers (The Hollywood Reporter and Variety) and to the tales they peddled was far greater than in other industries and in most modern commu-nities. The columnists were only one part of the grapevine. Another was a constant social interaction between members of different groups of elites, in the studios and out of them. Sev-eral times I saw the effectiveness of gossip in relation to my work, and I glimpsed its function in the lives of the movie makers. But I did not understand its full significance, or, un-fortunately, view it as a problem for study. Instead, my attitude was a combination of amusement and of gratefulness when the grapevine functioned to my advantage, as it did in securing interviews and on a few other occasions.

I attempted to have a stratified functional sample of inter-viewees, i.e. representatives of the front office, producers, directors, actors, writers, agents, and of the very successful, the medium successful, and the unsuccessful. Among the actors, writers, and directors, I found further subdivisions rang-ing from the creative to the mediocre which did not necessarily correspond to degrees of financial success. The subdivisions within the sample of approximately three hundred were not in proportion to their numbers in the movie colony, but assured representation of practically all groups and types. At that time people were openly 'left" and "right" and, as I was curious to find out if any correlation existed between political position and attitudes to movie-making and movie content, I deliberately chose to interview people of opposing political groups. This part of the study was admittedly not extensive, but no correlation apparently existed. In general, men of many differ-ent ideologies worked within the same social system, more or less accepting it because of the large financial rewards.

page 215

The sample was secured through a broad range of contact one leading to another. If a producer talked about relation with the writers in his current production, I tried to meet one or two of them. The Screen Writers' Guild was helpful in making contact with members who were in different categories such as writers of originals, westerns, comedies, and so forth. A director often helped me meet actors. Two friendly an intelligent agents arranged interviews with some of their clients. An actor would introduce me to some of his friends, an later I would interview them. It was a partly accidental, partly planned chain of contacts-decidedly not the random sample of a statistician. But picking names for a random sample out of a directory would have produced no interviews. Each one had to be carefully set up, through a contact. The interview took place in a studio office, in the home of the interviewee, or over lunch in a restaurant, but never on a set. Newspaper columnists and magazine writers often interviewed on the sets, and I had to differentiate myself from them.

Conversation was directed in a seemingly casual manner, and never completely directed. I began by getting the respond-ent to talk about the picture on which he was working and usually he was only too eager to do that. If he was currently not employed, we began on his most recent picture. I tried to get data on his specific role in its production, his relations with others working on it, his attitudes toward them and to his own role. From there we went on to his other occupational experiences in Hollywood, to his work background before go-ing there, and to his general goals. His values came out directly or indirectly, as did also his feelings about their realization or lack of it. Often the "leads" came spontaneously. Among the best interviews, in both quality and quantity of data, were those with a gifted and well-known director, who definitely directed the interviews, which he gave me once a week for a month. He had the time because he had just finished a picture and had not yet started another. I had waited three months for this free period.

Usually I took no notes during an interview and followed the Mississippi pattern of driving around the corner and, sitting in the car, writing it up roughly. Within twenty-four hours, the interview was part of a Dictaphone record, later transcribed

page 216

by a secretary. This was the first field experience in which I did not have to spend many hours at the typewriter.

Most people talked freely about themselves and their roles in moviemaking for a number of reasons. The gifted individuals had a high level of frustration, and frustrated people generally love to talk. Some, who came from Europe or from
the Broadway stage, were helpful because they saw Hollywood in the perspective of other societies. Others were good respondents for exactly the opposite reason, their naveté they knew not what they said. A few others had long been disturbed by the chaotic complexity of Hollywood and enjoyed discussing it. There are, in addition, two basic reasons underlying success in all field work: most people love to talk about themselves and rarely have enough opportunities to do so; and they are
flattered at having their opinions taken seriously.

Respondents talked about each other as well as about them-selves. It was therefore possible to see a subject not only through his own eyes, but through those of his friends, acquaintances, co-workers, and bosses, and to catch glimpses of him in roles outside the making of a movie. In this way I learned the current status of anyone in the movie colony. The sketches of individuals in my book on Hollywood are portraits of real people (with fictitious symbolic names) based on an integration of the data they gave me with what I learned from other sources, and on any intuitive insight I had of their personalities.

A significant omission from the sample of interviewees was representatives of the front office. With the exception of one atypical front-office executive (who has long since left Holly-wood), the few interviews with the powerful men at the top in major studios resulted in only superficial data and impres-sions. Many would not consent to be interviewed at all and others agreed only if their public relations aide was present-not an interview in my estimation. Accordingly, I never knew the top level of the Hollywood hierarchy, as I had known its equivalent in all other field work. I was well aware of the lack of direct contact with the most powerful segment of the social structure, but all efforts to include it were rebuffed.

On the other hand, there was an abundance of gossip, folk-lore, stories, and jokes-probably some true, many clever, all

page 217

hostile-which circulated about the top executives, and these tales far exceeded those about any other groups, including stars. Almost no one in Hollywood had a good word to say for the front office. The fulsome flattery to their faces had its opposite side in hostile jokes behind their backs. The folklore and jokes revealed the attitudes of those who told them, and the shared hatred of the front office seemed to be a bond be-tween the tellers of the tales. But anecdotes could hardly substitute for direct contact with the subjects.

The picture of the front-office executives given by everyone else was of men without gifts or talents, driven by a lust for domination over people and films, and by a desire for enor-mous profits. I can now only guess at the reasons they did not want to be interviewed. Perhaps they thought they were too important. Then, too, accustomed to the protective care of public relations aides, the front-office executives may have feared the prospect of facing directly a prying social scientist.

They did not suffer the frustrations of the artists, neither did they have the naivet_ of some of their employees, nor were they interested in unraveling the sociological complexities of Hollywood. What could they gain from talking to me?

However, the realities of the power struggle all along the assembly line of creation-between producer and writer, di-rector and actor, everybody and the front office-and the rela-tionship of this struggle to the final product, the movie, became increasingly apparent during the study. It became equally clear that the personalities and values of the individuals, as well as their positions in the hierarchy, were significant for the form and content of the movie. There were those who accepted the social structure and their place in the power hierarchy, and did as they were told, while others-a minority-struggled, with varying degrees of success, to manipulate the structure and to leave their own mark on the picture. I was much interested in the exceptions, who often highlighted the norm. These two un-equal groups illustrated well the paradox in movie-making: a creative process which was also a big business with an assembly line for production.

Among the exceptions was a successful movie writer who became disgusted with the quality of the movies made from the scripts he wrote to the orders of the producer and the front

page 218

office. He quit, even though it meant giving up a large salary without anything to take its place. This action was unusual. For many people, even a threat of suspension sufficed to bring them to heel, not only because of the loss of salary, but also because the studio was their whole life and apart from it they were lost. But this writer took a vacation to think and to plan what he would do. The front office of the studio where he had been working wired him an offer to be a producer-writer which carried the power to produce his own scripts. He ac-cepted the offer and was able to work on pictures which he could respect, and which, incidentally, were also profitable. Sometimes the front office permitted a dissatisfied talented writer or director to do one picture as he wanted, in order to keep him. The premise of the front office was that such a film would be a flop and then the artist would have learned a les-son. However, such a picture was not infrequently a box office, as well as an aesthetic, success, and thereafter the writer or director had a broader choice of material and of working conditions.

I found that the sociological problem of the content of movies, with which I had started, was fused with the aesthetic problem of all drama and story telling-the inner truth of character and plot. The latter was more apt to be achieved when a talented man (director, writer, or, occasionally, actor) gained sufficient control to use the medium as a form of self-statement. The trend towards becoming producer-writer, direc-tor-actor, producer-director-actor, producer-director-writer, and towards independent production (apart from the major studios) had begun when I was in Hollywood and I viewed it as promising.

Interviews with many writers, directors, and actors in the minority group of artists (those who did not accept the social structure) revealed certain personality traits in common which must have been formed long before they ever saw Hollywood. First of all, they wanted to do something more than make a lot of money. They were not uninterested in financial rewards, but they had a deep drive to project their own fantasies (rather than those of a producer or a front-office executive) on to the films they made and to illuminate a segment of life as they saw it. Their values were deeply rooted, they had courage, they

page 219

were willing at times to oppose the powerful men at the top and to take chances.

The run-of-the-mill writer, director, or actor, however, was quite different. So many people worked on a picture that it emerged as a hodgepodge without the stamp of any personal idea or fantasy, unless it was that of a top executive who had the final say. The people who worked, seemingly without pro-test, on the assembly line varied: artists, satisfied not to func-tion as such or according to their ability, mediocre people who had neither ability nor point of view, and pretentious frauds. The primary concern of all was a large salary. Data on them and on the detailed functioning of the assembly line came not only from interviews, but also from filing cabinets.

An important one was the file of the Screen Writers' Guild on the arbitration of screen credits, to which the Guild gave me access. When many writers worked on one script (as often happened), the awarding of credit might be difficult, and any writer who had worked on the film had the privilege of object-ing to the studios' award. The case then went for arbitration to a rotating panel of three members of the Screen Writers' Guild. Hearings were not oral, but consisted of communications from the writers involved and from other relevant studio people. The relations of writers with each other, with the producer, some-times with the director, and, occasionally, with a star, were recorded from as many points of view as the number of people concerned. The recorded hearings provided excellent detailed case histories of script writing, with a minimum of time and energy expenditure on my part. The file also enabled me to check on data from interviews.

In one case from the files, the executive head of a studio purchased a novel, two story treatments, and a script from another studio. He then employed Writer One to do a new screen play which would conform to his and to the producerÕs ideas. A director sat in on story conferences and contributed his suggestions. But when the script was finished, the producer and front-office executive did not like it and employed Writer Two to do a new script. Later, two other writers were added, one to polish the dialogue. At the end the executive, with no experience in writing, rewrote much of the script. I saw the result, a mediocre film from every point of view, although a

page 220

greater than usual amount of money was spent for its exploitation. All the writers on this film earned large salaries, and those I interviewed appeared to accept their roles as part of the game.

In the office of the Production Code Administration of the Producers' Association (MPPAA-Motion Picture Producers Association of America) was another filing record which I thought would be relevant to this study. The staff members charged with implementing the self-imposed code of morality read all scripts and worked with producers from the beginning of a film to the end, advising on those points they considered unacceptable and often suggesting changes which would en-able the film to receive the Association's seal of approval. In the file for each movie was not only the correspondence about the implementation of the code, but also a detailed record of all conversations about it. In interviews I received only tidbits about the implementation of the code on this or that picture, but never the whole story, which often covered many months of conferences and exchange of letters. I therefore had an eye on the file, but was told it was completely secret, and that absolutely no one outside of the Production Code office had access to it. There did not seem to be anything I could do about seeing this file.

Then one day the Producers' Association unexpectedly of-fered me a job. I had met a few of their staff to whom I hap-pened to mention my analysis of movies in terms of culture patterns. The Association, threatened by pressures from the Legion of Decency and other would-be censors of movies, thought it would be helpful to have an objective content anal-ysis of them, and asked me to do the job. I immediately declined. Startled, the vice-presidents asked me if I was not even going to consider it. Realizing I had made a faux pas, I hastily said that I would give it serious consideration and let them know my final decision in a week's time.

When we met again I played my role better, telling the vice-presidents how much I regretted that I could not accept the position. Shocked, they upped the salary and held out many other inducements of what my future might be with the Producers' Association. I still refused. The reasons were: I was too interested in my research project to stop working on it or to give it part time, as was then suggested; it would not have been

page 221

good to be aligned with any one group, such as the Producers Association or a guild; working for the Producers' Association was not my idea of a desirable professional future. At first I said nothing to anyone about the offer, but then I told a half-dozen people-in great confidence By the end of a week many knew of the Association's offer, and that I had said "No." In the retelling, the tale was much exaggerated in regard to the offered salary. A frequent interpretation was that the producers had tried to "buy" me off. This, I think, was incorrect. They really wanted and needed a content analysis of the movies they were making. But regardless of the motive for the offer, saying "no" was unusual in Hollywood and my prestige went up.

More important was my manipulation of the situation. One of the men working for the Association considered himself a sort of sociologist (although with little formal training); when he heard that I had refused the offer, he phoned to congratulate me on my good sense in turning it down. He seemed almost too delighted and I wondered if he had feared me as a possible rival. A few days later I dropped in to see him. Again he congratulated me, and again his satisfaction was apparent. As I arose to leave, he asked if there was anything he could do for me. I casually replied that it would be helpful to have access to the files which recorded the implementation of the Production Code. I was indeed pleased when my acquaintance smiled and said he thought he could get the necessary permission.

A few days later be phoned and told me everything was okay and to come over. Taking me down to the filing room, he introduced me to the head clerk, and told her to give me the file on any movie I wanted. Leaving the room he said, "It's all yours," and winked. He was a small, serious, prim man, and the wink was decidedly out of character. For a while I sat at the table with a file in front of me, wondering about the wink and his remark. Could it mean that he was using me to get back at the Producers' Association? Previously I bad vaguely sensed some hostility in him to it. Whatever his motivation, the files he had opened to me were rich in data. I spent a half-day each week in the filing room until I had the needed material. (In both the Screen Writers' and the Production Code files, I was under obligation not to mention the name of the movie, studio,

page 222

or people.) From the file of the Producers' Association came the chapter, "Taboos," in my book.

Data from interviews and filing cabinets were supplemented by a limited and rather superficial observation and participa-tion. Occasionally, I went on a set and watched the director, actors, camera man, script-girl, and the many technicians involved in the shooting of a small scene. But repetition of this kind of observation neither gave new data nor deepened my understanding. The few hours on a set did not enable me to feel even vicariously the genuine excitement which at times pervades the making of a movie. I knew about it intellectually, primarily through interviews with creative directors. The trans-ferring of an image, originating in a novel or script and taking form in a director's mind, to the screen where it will be seen by millions of people is exciting. But I did not feel it, in the way I felt the emotional impact of religious services in a Negro church in rural Mississippi.

The observer's role, as well as the participant's, was lacking in my Hollywood study. I did not see and hear people in actual work and life situations. Instead, I learned through interviews: people told me what happened when they worked on a movie and of their reactions. I had similar useful data through the files. In all field work I have relied on interviews and, when available, on written sources of information. But except in Hollywood, these were always combined with, and related to, participant observation of spontaneous life situations. What people told me and what I read was constantly checked with what I saw, heard, and experienced, just as the latter was checked through interviews. Equally important, I lacked in Hollywood the deep feeling tone of the society which a field worker acquires through constant observation and participation. I never felt its culture in my bones, as in Lesu with my continuous participant observation in daily secular and ritual life.

In order to be more on the inside, I considered accepting a job as script writer which was offered me. But I declined because I knew of the strong possibility that I would spend in days isolated in a studio office, only to leave the studio with little more data than could be gained from chit-chat and gossip with other writers in the lunch room. I could get that without taking a job.

page 223

Nor was participation in social life as rewarding for research as it was in other field work. In Hollywood there was no more or less permanent. group Relatively few people were indigenous; they came and they left; personal and for an anthropologist to get a toe-hold in this kind of "community.- However, was easy to observe casual inter-personal relations dominate by pseudo-friendliness; the "darling" and "Sweetheart" term of address and demonstrations of affection and love in situations of hostility, hatred, and lack of respect; the crude domination and the sycophantic dependency. I knew about, but did not participate in, the continuous cycle in which people were together in work, in weekending, in love and sex relations, horse racing, card-playing, drinking, and so on.

Some social life was different, and I participated in it a bit. Dinner and long evenings of discussion with a gifted English writer whom I had known slightly in my student Bloomsbury days were always pleasant and rewarding. He had a hard bril-liance which illuminated all discussions of Hollywood with him. Others writers I knew gave elaborate dinner parties in upper-class style. But conversation was usually dull and the gossip repetitious. Only occasionally was a little data gleaned, such as the time I heard two talented writers go into a long serious huddle over a problem in a script for which neither had any respect.

A few parties were personally enjoyable. Among the latter were those given by a European woman, a writer, to whom I had an introduction from an old friend of hers in New York. She was not in the high salary-prestige group, and food at her parties was always simple. But the occasions approached the European salon in style, and the guests were all creative, regardless of their salary bracket. The high light for me at one of her supper parties was meeting Charlie Chaplin, a hero of mine since the days of the silent film. He seemed to be genius incarnate, and I could not keep my eyes from his face and hands, the most expressive I have ever seen. He pantomimed his formal butler and a process server from the sheriffs office who was trying to reach him in a paternity suit; he sang Cockney songs and was the center of the stage for the whole evening. One of the other guests-a playwright-told me later that Chaplin was playing to me, the only stranger at the party

page 224

and, obviously, an admiring one. I did not ask for an interview because 1 was almost certain that it would not have contributed to my knowledge of the social structure of Hollywood But meeting him and having a sense of his great vitality (I bad just passed his sixtieth birthday) and of' his genius in face-to-face contact was exciting and gave me a feeling euphoria.

I had friends in a small circle of actors whose parties were enjoyable for their gaiety. From them I bad a sense of the actor's personality and of his deep need to act. At one party a well-known comedian said, 'Why can't we be intellectual tonight, when we have an anthropologist to talk to?" The others booed! We played charades as usual. I liked them for their spontaneity and lack of pretension.

Although friendly with a number of people, I had no inti-mates as I have bad in all other field work, No sense of mutual identification, so productive in understanding both an indi-vidual and his society, existed with even one person. Close friendships were rare in Hollywood, I was told. I had friends in the anthropology department of U.C.L.A., where I was teaching part-time, and a small number of other acquaintances and friends outside the movie industry. I enjoyed these contacts and thought they were of value as an antidote to Hollywood. Now I question this value. I had one foot in my own world and was functioning in it. I was never totally immersed in Hollywood as I have been in other field situations.

However, from interviews, files, a limited number of friendly contacts, and a minor degree of participation certain problems and issues emerged quite clearly: the assembly-line method of creation, the struggle for power and domination, the star sys-tem, the self-imposed code of morality for films and the amoral-ity of most human relations, the 100 per cent guild organization in a company town, the diversity in values between artists and business executives, the phoniness of would-be artists. I knew the exceptions as well as the norms. I had some answers to my original problem of the relationship of the social struc-ture of Hollywood to its movies. A book on Hollywood had taken form, in my mind and I even had its title before I left there.

page 225

As I wandered through the Hollywood maze, as an objective scientist, and took pride in a Jovian detachment. Now, with hindsight, I know the situation was quite different.

As I left Hollywood after a year and drove past marking the boundaries of Los Angeles, I burst into song, as is my habit when feeling joy. But even that reaction did not make me realize how deeply I hated the place. When leaving other field sites, I have usually been both glad and sorry-glad to depart because I have been tired and fed-up; sorry to leave my friends and life in the field. Except for the Hollywood situation, I have never been joyous on leaving, nor have I hated a society I studied. Although it might be difficult, there is no reason why an anthropologist could not study a society he hated, so long as he was aware of his feelings at the time, and was able to cope with them. But my rage was bottled up, and never fully conscious.

I happen to be a person of strong feelings, and it might have been predicted from the previous conditioning of my per-sonality that I would feel rage in Hollywood. The plunge into the labor movement had been a rebellion from authority in the family and against the subjugation of unorganized workers by employers. Nor was it irrelevant that World War II, in which we fought a totalitarian concept of man, had just ended before I went to Hollywood, or that I bad always been (and still am) concerned with the moral problem of freedom. I had, also, always been hostile to a way of life in which the accumulation of wealth was the primary motive. My identifications had long been with scientists and artists, and I have never seen any real ideological or temperamental incompatibility between them.

But I played it cool, as today's jargon would express it. I pretended a role of amused detachment. I knew, of course, that

page 226

the fraudulence of the human relations, the treatment of people as property, the debasement of taste, and the whole d humanization which occurred in the making of most movie were foreign to my values. But instead of letting my de feelings spill over into rage, I felt superior. I now wonder why would have happened if the men at the top of the power hierarchy had been accessible to me. It is possible that I might have acquired a feeling of compassion that would have a ]owed me to get Inside their roles and then detach myself, a I had done with white planters in Mississippi. Or I might have seen that the behavior of the front office did not necessarily spring wholly from malice, but could be the all-too-frequent denegation of the talented by the untalented.

My role as a field worker was also affected by the fact that the Hollywood study attracted more attention than anything I had ever done. Colleagues and people outside the academic world were intrigued by the idea of an anthropologist studying Hollywood. Unfortunately, I, too, became intrigued with play mg a role and doing something unusual. In no other field work had this happened. I had merely followed my interests and my profession: any other role-playing was secondary and incidental.

Given my personality, it was inevitable that I should be on the side of the artists in their struggle against the power of the front office, and this attitude was not detrimental to the study of the artists. Through my identification with them, I was able to get inside their roles, then detach myself and see them with considerable objectivity. The best parts of the book on Hollywood are the chapters on directors and actors, pre-cisely because I was openly and consciously identified with them.

It had not taken me long to learn that the director was the key person and belonged to movie-making in an organic sense. Even without actually seeing directors at work, I was able to understand their creative excitement in interviews and to be sympathetic with their frustrations. The chapter on directors gives far more data on the creative ones than their number warranted. But they were the key to understanding the trans-lation of a fantasy into a film. Furthermore, the relationship between director and actors is natural, i.e. indispensable for

page 227

the making of the film, and not imposed by the financial power structure.

I quickly understood a basic fact about actors: that acting is a way of life for them. I saw them as human beings with the kind of personality whose needs were best met by acting. Whether the script and directors were good or bad, the actor usually did the best he could and thus maintained his integrity as an artist. Acting was essential to his being fully alive. This I could understand. Field work, writing, teaching are among the ways in which I feel alive.

Then, too, I saw actors, regardless of their success or wealth as an underprivileged group; many of them knew they were looked down upon by other members of the Hollywood hier-archy. In the chapter, "Actors are People," (Hollywood, the dream factory) I discussed their resentments to the seven-year contract, by which they were legally owned by the studio for that period, and to being treated as synthetic products of publicity and make-up departments, camera man, producer, director, and front office. The talented artists were deeply sincere about their work, and I related to them easily. Naturally, I met and interviewed many actors without much ability, who were of interest only as they rep-resented certain types. But they intrigued me, too. The actor's personality was new to me and I was constantly trying to understand him.

I think, too, that I was not immune to the charm and "glamour" of some of the actors. I remember interviewing a handsome well-known actor, as we lunched beside a pool. I wondered if any observer would call that work However, the interview did produce good data, as did similar ones.

My relationship with writers, however, was quite different from that with directors and actors. Although closer by tem-perament and profession to the writers than to any other group in Hollywood, I failed to identify with them or to get inside their roles. The producer-writer relationship was not functional in the social structure as was that of director-actor. As I interviewed producers and writers and read the files on the arbitration of screen credits, the clich_ of the writer being the producer's lead pencil seemed, and was, only too true. I was

page 228

indignant at the writers for getting into this position and horrified when I found gifted writers (whose work before coming to Hollywood had been literature) working on admittedly mediocre scripts and taking them seriously. But was this any different from the actor taking his role in a mediocre film with seriousness? Obviously not. For both it was a way of preserving some measure of self-respect. But at the time I did not see this. I wrote that the writers had become "soft," that they sacrificed their integrity as artists for monetary rewards. To a large extent, this may have been a true value judgment, i.e. for those who were artists and who possessed integrity. But indignation limited my understanding.

I duly listened as the writers told me of the compensations they enjoyed: for the first time they were free of debt, able to buy pretty clothes for t ' heir wives, save money for the education of their children, and, in general, live in upper-class comfort. All this left me "cold"; I wrote, "the creative person who functions as such has to make some sacrifices (ibid, p. 136).

Many of the writers not only experienced a prosperity un-known before coming to Hollywood, but also enjoyed, for the first time, participation in an occupational group. Writing is generally a lonely condition. But in Hollywood writers were with each other in the studio dining room and at conferences and, away from the studio, they bad a lively social life among themselves; some were also active in the Screen Writers' Guild. Although "a producer's lead pencil," they enjoyed having an essential role in a multi-million-dollar industry and knowing that the film on which they worked reached a world-wide audi-ence. Writers, gifted or not, talked quite honestly about the advantages of Hollywood for them. But I scornfully thought of the gifted ones as moral prostitutes and labeled many of their ideas about the advantages of Hollywood as rationalizations. The fact that most writers, left, center, and right po-litically. accepted the system, received satisfaction from it, and even defended it, primarily because of financial rewards, or for the glamour of being part of Hollywood (though they also lampooned it), put them beyond the pale for me-not a favor-able situation for understanding. I could not step outside their

page 229

roles for objective analysis because I had never been inside them.

I was (and am) a writer. Writing is a way of life for me. The writers had let me down, because they ad not come u] to my expectations of professional integrity. Yet, I had understood and objectively studied white Mississippians whose standards of behavior towards Negroes certainly lacked integrity and were far different from mine. Why were my reactions to the Hollywood writers and to the white Mississippians (both members of my own race and culture) so different? The behavior of each cut clearly across my strongly held values. But in Mississippi, I knew quite consciously that I might have be-haved like the white people if I had lived there all my life. I was glad that this had not been the case, and felt compassion for the whites. This was in sharp contrast to my "holier-than-thou" attitude towards the Hollywood writers.

In looking back upon the Hollywood field work, I think I was unconsciously threatened by the writers. Perhaps I had wanted to become one of them but would not admit it. Unconscious envy usually underlies a "holier-than-thou" attitude. It was inevitable that I should be involved with the writers, since I regarded myself as one. The problem, however, was not in my involvement, but that I was unaware of its real nature. If I had been more aware, I might have been able to objectify the situation and to have studied it with more detachment.

In other field experiences I knew when I was involved. When I met a would-be lynching gang on a road in Mississippi, my involvement and wanting to save the Negro were so open that I had an anxious and sleepless night. But the next day I was able to get outside the situation and take notes. In Lesu I was quite aware of my personal involvement when my friend, Pulong, was critically ill; I took notes on my feelings, as well as on the ill woman, her husband and her relatives. Conscious involvements are not a handicap for the social scientist. Uncon-scious ones are always dangerous.

After the manuscript of the book was completed and ac-cepted by the publisher, be suggested that I insert more com-parisons with primitive societies. I had used only a few which were pertinent. I resisted the suggestion, arguing that I did not think more such comparisons were relevant. Then, against

page 330

my better judgment, I accepted and implemented the publisher's suggestion, inserting many analogies with primitive so-cieties which now seem out of place and weakening to the book. The profuse use of analogies was a gimmick, designed to make the book more popular rather than meaningful, and not too different from the gimmicks used in movie scripts. The possibility of popularity was not unpleasant. I had submitted to the Front Office!

My "holier-than-thou" attitude in Hollywood should have put me on guard, but, unfortunately, did not. I thought that objectivity was obtained by having as good a stratified sample as the situation permitted, allowing respondents to speak freely about their behavior and attitudes without any expression of my values, and recording as exactly as possible what they said. All these are. necessary techniques, but do not insure a field worker's psychological mobility to step in and out of the roles of peoples with different value systems.

Is it possible for anyone-artist, social scientist, or reporter -to write both meaningfully and with objective detachment about Hollywood? Lillian Ross's superb reporting of the making of The Red Badge of Courage is the most objective writing I know on Hollywood. (Lillian Ross, "Picture" in her Reporting (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1964). First published as, "Onward and Upward with The Arts" in The Now Yorker, May 24th, 31st, June 7th, 14th, 21st, 1952.) In a sense she was doing for one picture what I had tried to do earlier for the social structure as a whole. Her success as a participant observer in following the making of an atypical film over a period of two years could be the envy of any field worker. She observed the interplay between John Huston, a fascinating and gifted director-writer, Gottfried Reinhardt, an intelligent, cynical producer, and Dore Schary, intelligent and optimistic, in charge of the studio's production. She caught and portrayed well their creative excitement, frus-trations, and compromises. The description of their relations with the front-office executives is much less detailed and more second-hand, although penetrating. Powerful Louis B. Mayer did not want to make the picture, but the still more powerful Nicholas M. Schenk in the New York office of Loew's, Inc., supported Dore Schary so that the latter would learn by making a mistake, i.e. making a picture that would be a financial

page 231

flop. But objective as her report was, reviewers referred to its subjects as "victims" and wrote that she would not be welcome in Hollywood again.

Viewing my Hollywood field work in retrospect, I think it succeeded to a considerable degree in describing the social structure in which movies were made and the manner in which this structure influenced their quality, form, and content. My point of view as a humanist and my concern with the human and social costs of movie making gave meaning and strength to the book. Identification with artists enabled me to understand and present their roles, their frustrations, and their occasional victories in a factory producing fantasies. Many readers praised the book for its portrayal of the artists' position in the United States. But I think of what the book might have been if some of my involvements had not been hidden, if I had possessed the psychological mobility and the sociological opportunity to enter and understand all the contending groups, if my value system had not so aggressively dominated the whole study, if I had known more humility and compassion.