Agnes Christine Johnston — Good-Bye, Hollywood! (1930) 🇺🇸

I have left Hollywood! My beautiful home of eleven rooms and five baths; my Pierce-Arrow limousine and my faithful sports car; my wonderful little steeple-chaser and hunter, Pinto; my polo, and beyond all, my marvelous friends. I have left it all to settle in a little country town on Long Island, where I know scarcely anyone, where we live in a ramshackle old house with dubious plumbing and drive a 1924 Studebaker coach. I have left Hollywood for this; and I have never been so happy in my life!

by Agnes Christine Johnston

Certainly Hollywood was wonderful to me. Money enough to give me every comfort and substantial savings besides; excitement, gaiety — I don't see how anyone could have had better times anywhere.

As I look back, it isn't the big parties I remember, May fair, Ambassador dances, or somebody's big Sunday afternoon 'crush.' Those things are rather dim to me already. But certain isolated hours stand out as clearly and joyously as the day after they happened.

King Vidor, Jack Gilbert, Aileen Pringle and one or two others, staying after a dinner party until four o'clock in the morning, picking the bones of a turkey and talking, talking, talking, about everything and nothing with an utter frankness, inspired by after-party exhaustion!

The day Will Rogers invited the girls to play on his grass polo field and joined the sport himself with his two sons, singled me out by my crimson jersey and shouted, "Come on, Red!" when I managed to make two hits in succession!

Frank Borzage's handling of an open speed-boat in a tumultuous sea!

Charlie Chaplin and Beatrice Lillie, at a Sunday supper party, vieing with each other in extemporaneous mimicry and then joining forces in singing the Sextette from Lucia with what I am quite sure was the sublimest burlesque that ever made an audience roll on the floor with laughter!

Marion Davies' remarks to a horse she was afraid might be as reluctant to be ridden as she was reluctant to ride it.

Doris Kenyon and Leatrice Joy and Irene Rich and myself, lying on the hot sand at the Beach Club, all talking about our children!

Buddy Rogers frying waffles at a Hunt Breakfast before a steeplechase I was about to ride in and making me forget how afraid I was by his good-natured raillery!

And work, too! For all people say and for all I have said about scenario-writing, there have been moments — yes, years — that were rarely stimulating. The "Forbidden Paradise" script with Ernst Lubitsch, who was only able to speak a little English at that time, but who didn't need language to reveal the brilliance of his mind. Beverly of Graustark, which marked my first association with Marion Davies and the thrill of seeing every comedy point put over by her inspired sense of humor and finally watching it being welded into a charming whole by that nervous genius, Sidney Franklin!

Working with the lovely Corinne Griffith on The Divine Lady, with Frank Lloyd unfolding the whole so that it was a symphony of beauty!

Heated, but stimulating and good-natured wrangles with King Vidor over "The Patsy" and "Show People."

No, there may have been grief — plenty of it — but I question if the average playwright or novelist has as many highlights of inspiration in an equal number of years.

Everyone, thinks I am mad to leave all this. Why, just a few days ago at a tea in New York, given by the Lawrence Tibbetts, I met four of my Hollywood friends, who were visiting in New York. No, I won't tell their names, but I will say that, one by one, they took me aside and told me I was crazy, wild, to leave Hollywood!

Perhaps I am. Sometimes I think so myself! But I'm happy here. So it's not crazy to stay where I'm happy, is it?

But why am I happy? Getting such a kick out of everything, being thrilled by economizing, riding in subways, sitting in balcony seats at the theater, putting lengthening flounces on last year's dresses, going to speak-easies, instead of night clubs (no deprivation). Why am I so happy? Because it's different, something new, a change. Writers, all creative artists have to have a change ever so often.

"That's the only thing I have against the executives of the picture business. They don't seem to understand. Once they have a director, writer or star make a success for them, they demand a continuation of the same type of work. When you try to break away, they seem to think it's because of some personal grievance.

Wonderful Tom Ince was the only employer I have ever left, who did not seem — well, not resentful exactly — but acting, somehow, as though I hadn't appreciated what he had done for me. When I left Ince, he only grinned. He knew the reason I was deserting him was to go on a honeymoon!

There's not much opportunity for change in Hollywood now-a-days. Years ago, before mergers reigned supreme in the land, and the companies were competing fiercely against each other, it gave you a great kick to be stolen by a company from under the very nose of a rival producer. It was a sort of moral contract to make good — to give the utmost that was in you, so that the firm that had gone to such lengths to get you should excel its rival.

I've always done my best work with new companies — companies just starting out, where everyone was fresh and enthusiastic. "Daddy-Long-Legs," Mary Pickford's initial picture for First National, "Rich Men's Wives," Ben Schulberg's first, when he was starting "as an independent, "Twenty-three and a Half Hours' Leave," and my Charles Ray series in the great days of Ince. Then finally those thrilling years when Irving Thalberg was welding together the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer organization into the great producing machine it has become. What a joy it was to watch great picture after picture unroll in the projection room, to stay at the' studio from nine in the morning until midnight, in order to accomplish the rush of work that was given you, to get a smile from Irving when you made a good suggestion, or to be kidded by him unmercifully when your idea was bad!

But now-a-days, with only four really big companies, all of them understanding each other — not much thrill seeking a new job! Right or wrong, one has the feeling that the producers won't cut each other's throats to get you, rather they'll get together in an effort to — well, keep you from thinking too much of yourself.

Good business for business men — not so good for artists. Artists have to feel free — wanted! It's not so much the money that counts. My happiest job was with the old Vitagraph company when I was getting twenty-five dollars a week. It's the thrill that matters. The sound mechanicians, the song composers are getting it now. Something new! They're doing marvelous work. But in two years — five — they may sink into the grind, too.

Those at the head of the industry dimly realize the problem. Always talking about wanting 'new faces,' 'new brains.' Why not use the trained brains, the proven faces; the people who have given their all to pictures? Give them a chance to get a kick out of it and they'll be fresh enough. Let everyone change around. Different directors, different supervisors, different stars, different studios, even. Send them all on RKO vaudeville tours, like Leatrice Joy. Have a crack director direct a New York stage play that the company is financing. Change, change, change! Life itself is change. The only thing static in Life is Death! The only thing static in pictures is executives. There hasn't been a change in the production head of any of the really big studies since Winfield Sheehan took control of Fox three years ago. And what he accomplished has made glamorous picture history-

As a final cock-eyed suggestion, which will probably get me in wrong for the rest of my life, why not give the executives themselves a chance to ride on the merry-go-round? Irving Thalberg head of Warner productions; Winnie Sheehan at Paramount; Ben Schulberg at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer; the Warners presiding over Fox? Wouldn't they all have the swellest kind of a time, perhaps make better films!

1916, when I wrote my first big hit, "God's Country and the Woman" — 1930, fourteen years! It's a long time, isn't it? Not many of the 1916 Big Names left. Those who bore the Big Names are left, all right. One sees them every day in Hollywood, asking casting directors for bits, trying to get jobs directing or writing in Poverty Row on percentage. Yes, they're mostly still in Hollywood, but they aren't Big Names any longer.

I have known so many of those who have stayed in the game too long, forced their brains too hard, squeezed and squeezed out the last drop of freshness, until there was nothing left. Not even enough to make a new break for another field. Cruel, cruel, cruel! Those anxious, bitter faces! I don't want to be like that. I want to get out while I'm still fresh!

In three months, since coming to New York, I've finished my first novel. Don't know whether it's any good. Got a wonderful thrill writing it. After that comes a musical comedy idea, that's been buzzing in my head for years. Lots of encouragement already from a famous musical comedy star. But what if she doesn't take it? It'll be something different, to sharpen, stimulate my brain. Something new!

I don't expect to make my mark in my new work in three months or three years, perhaps. No great hurry. Money saved from pictures will take care of that. Perhaps I'll never do what I've set out to do. Even then I'll have had a grand time!

But if I do put it over! If I ever get to the position where I can say to the picture producers, "I know pictures, I love pictures — let me come out for one production — two perhaps — then make me seek change. Kick me out, 'till I am ready to return with renewed freshness!" If I ever get to where I can obtain an understanding like that, then it won't be a question of "Good-bye, Hollywood" but "Hello, Hollywood, here I come!”

In Hollywood she lived in a mansion, rode in a limousine, and played polo with Will Rogers! But Agnes Christine Johnston left all this — for what? Let her tell you.

Agnes Johnston wrote the scenarios of some of Marion Davies' best comedies, including "The Patsy" and "Show People." The two girls are great friends.

Exchanging Hollywood luxury for Long Island economy! Agnes Christine Johnston (Mrs. Frank Dazey) and her children — Mitchell, Ruth Margaret, and Frank Jr.

'The girl who turned her back on Hollywood' has written, in collaboration with her husband, Frank Dazey, a play called "Nice Girl," which is now in rehearsal.

Collection: Screenland Magazine, November 1930