First two pages
When we were kids we used to play a game called, Life and
death. It consisted of a choice between
two horrors. The last was always: ‘To be hanged by the neck’, and the first
varied according to circumstances and the major fear of the moment. For
instance: ‘Which would you rather – spend the whole summer holidays with
teacher or be hanged by the neck?’
As if it were yesterday I can remember a friend of mine
bouncing up and down and screaming hysterically: ‘Ooer! Holls with stinking old
teacher? Hang me! Hang me quick!’
I always maintain that childhood is the wisest age of man.
An adult is usually corrupted child who has lost the wisdom of choice. For
instance, how many people would prefer obscurity to Stardom? To ‘be in pictures’
has a horrid fascination for most people. There used to be a famous recruiting
phrase, ‘There is a Field-Marshal’s baton in every soldier’s knapsack’. Well
there’s no temptation nowadays when there is a Hollywood contract in every mug’s
pocket. Even if you’ve got a face like the back of a cab it may be just the cab
some talent scout is looking for and you’ll be lifted out of the tomb of obscurity.
But what people don’t realise is that they are choosing the most terrible trade
on Earth. It’s certain death because as we can’t all be Stars at the same time
the more Stars we kill off the more chance there is for us. The moving picture
firms keep on telling the public that a Star’s life is the best in the world
because they have to keep their business going and they don’t seem to be able
to do it without the poor Stars. This form of propaganda has served the firms
very well for as soon as a Star is exterminated there is always another ready
to take the vacant position. In fact the public finds the prospect just as
delightful as being born to die in battle.
There are two ways by which the Big-Hearted Public
exterminates the Stars.
The first is hate. The public refuses point blank to pay to
see the Star, so Firm sacks Star and Star, instead of being glad to be taken
out of the firing line, commits suicide or goes about miserable.
The second way is love. They band together in innumerable
clubs and other powerful bodies and having chosen a Star as their particularly
prey they proceed to devour it with love. They start writing to the Star threatening blackmail, promising worse than death, proving strange obligations of
Star to public and demanding all kinds of odd things. Instead of calling in the
police the Firms have made it a rule to believe that the more letters of this
kind the Star receives the greater the Star’s value. When this kind of
correspondence has reached startling proportions the Firm decides that the time
is ripe to send the Star out to make personal appearances before the
Big-Hearted Public. The consequences are very alarming because if the Firm has
been so careless as not to provide some adequate barrier between Star and
Big-Hearted the latter will set upon the former and, passing over it like a
plague of locusts over a fruit tree, will leave it standing in the torn shreds
of its drawers with one last button swing by a thread. Only the remnants of
civilization, growing daily less, keeps them from taking home the limbs, eyes
and teeth as love-tokens.
No, one can’t help feeling awfully sorry for the Stars and
the desire to warn them is not only humane but irresistible. The Firms are
inventing all kinds of new ways of making the Big-Hearted want to devour the
Stars. However it is useless because the Stars are very, very brave things who shrug
their shoulders and say the work is well paid. It has become evident from
recent world happenings that it is the female vote that counts so the Firms
have ordered some Stars to take down or take up their trousers as often as
possible in pictures…
