THE GIRL FROM HOLLYWOOD. By Edgar Rice Burroughs. (Methuen. 7s.
6d. net.)
Mr. Burroughs, having exhausted the apes and the Martians, has now brought his pen to bear on one of the most interesting and sordid sections of mere humanity. The interest of Hollywood is natural enough ; its sordidness, according to accounts, is mainly due to the herding together of actors and actresses whose salaries are, for the most part, grotesquely disproportionate to their abilities. Mr. Burroughs keeps away from personalities," but spares us no detail of the general scene : drug-fiends and vampires advance from his pages almost as realistically as, in their professional moments. they loom from the screen. A powerful foil is needed for these distressing disclosures ; the dramatic values and the popular voice alike demand one. Mr. Burroughs obliges by importing into the milieu of his story a palpably healthy breeze from the adjacent West, an indisputably strong man, and an ingenue whose " innocence," though it might captivate Tarzan, would certainly seem suspect to Freud. It will be interesting to see if The Girl from Hollywood, which, like its predecessors, has obvious merits as a succes de sujet, will come to share their enormous vogue. The path is clear, and it would be as unfair as futile to attempt any further influence on the popular verdict.
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