![]() She was all of eight in 1935 when, as she stood waiting outside Louis B. ![]() ![]() The former child star Cora Sue Collins, today a vital and vibrant 92, still remembers the moment she realized that sex with the bosses was the norm. The transactional nature of the film business was something most women learned sooner or later. The story goes that she spent it all on black lingerie and then became one of the first (but far from the last) HSC residents to depart for marriage. Cast as an extra in DeMille’s The King of Kings, she was considered so destitute that when a donor offered $50 for the neediest resident, Williams chose Rand to receive it. Ayn Rand, then an aspiring writer, arrived from Chicago soon after the new building opened. There were daily classes, a weekly newsletter, and a bulletin board posting job openings and perks such as free tickets to events. T o run the HSC, the Y hired the college-educated Marjorie Williams to supervise an all-female administrative staff. Photograph from The Bruce Torrence Hollywood Photograph Collection/ Digital colorization by Sanna Dullaway. Men were prohibited above the first floor.Īctress Lois Lee at the original building in 1922, when planning began for an all-new facility. Norma Talmadge had pitched in $5,000.) The rules of the house were simple: You had to be working or seeking work in show business, be between 18 and 35 years old, and not stay longer than three years. They were indirectly inspired by Hollywood luminaries such as Gloria Swanson, Jackie Coogan, and Frances Marion, whose names appeared on small brass plaques above the bedroom doors. The two upper stories consisted of single, double, and triple rooms to house 100 women-each paying 10 to 15 dollars a week for lodging and two meals a day. The first floor featured a spacious lobby, writing rooms, a library, a large dining area, and a stage. Morgan’s multiarched structure, designed in the Italian Renaissance Revival style, opened to much fanfare in 1926. The YWCA donated a parcel of land south of Sunset, in Hollywood, and hired Julia Morgan, the renowned California architect, already acclaimed for her public buildings and her work on publisher William Randolph Hearst’s ever expanding “castle” at San Simeon. Hays’s $20,000 pledge to the building fund was one of the HSC’s largest single gifts. How were you going to keep them down on the farm after they’d been to the local cinema? Young women sat in darkened theaters, and the adventurous, independent female spirits on the screen sparked their imagination. They flocked west because the movies made the movies look pretty darn good.įilms opened a whole new world. A speech by the world’s highest-paid actress, Mary Pickford, warned them to keep away. ![]() And though few people remember the Hollywood Studio Club, a recounting of its neglected history reveals how little has changed-and how powerful female friendships can be.īeginning in the early 1910s, as the movies made Southern California their base of operations, young women flocked to Hollywood, hoping to be a part of it. Yet for nearly 60 years there was a residence that housed women (10,000 in all) in a protected and supportive environment. There is little new about #MeToo, but what is new is that women are shattering their isolation by speaking out and finding strength and community as a result. F or more than a century in Hollywood, young women have learned in horrendous ways that men in power often consider them goods to be bartered or simply consumed.
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