"Newman, Kim - The Pierce-Arrow Stalled, And..." - читать интересную книгу автора (Newman Kim)

At the 1928 Republican Convention, Hays bid successfully for the
nomination and gracefully accepted the defeated Herbert Hoover onto his
ticket. The election was fought on a single issue, whether or not to
repeal the Volstead Act. So public a moralist as Will H. Hays could not
conceivably come out in favour of drink. The Democratic candidate,
inescapably wet, thus garnered the liquid vote, forcefully arguing that
a law which made criminals of nine tenths of the population should not
remain in force.
The candidate and Gloria Swanson (with whom he was never linked in the
Hearst press lest Pulitzer papers link William Randolph Hearst with
Marion Davies) hosted a lavish pre-election party at which bootleg booze
flowed so freely even the lax Los Angeles police had to take note. Hays
tried to make capital of the candidate's arrest, but the public noted
that, along with the jovial Boston Irishman, charges were levelled
against all their favourite screen personalities: Douglas Fairbanks,
Richard Barthelmess, Mary Miles Minter, Lon Chaney, Buster Keaton,
'Fatty' Arbuckle, Mae Murray. When the case came to trial, the
distinguished defendants, many of whom engaged in pleasant banter with
starstruck officers of the court, were each fined the sum of one dollar
and dismissed.
After a third recount, Hays conceded the election. Joseph Patrick
Kennedy was duly sworn in as the thirty-first President of the United
States of America.
Catriona Kaye, Libido in America: A Social History of Hollywood (1953)

Garbo Talks! Anna Christie (1930).

During the second half of the '20s and well into the talkie era, there
was considerable competition among female stars in regard to nudity. The
game seemed to be who could get naked soonest, stay naked longest.
Gloria Swanson, Pola Negri, Barbara La Marr and Clara Bow were regularly
in states that made Theda Bara, sex siren of the 'teens, blanch. The
true contest was between directors; fans followed the bitter feud of
Cecil B. DeMille and Erich von Stroheim as each pushed back the limits
of what was acceptable. While DeMille presided over a succession of
screen-filling orgies, intent on cramming more naked people into one
huge set than were ever assembled in the most depraved potentate's
harem, von Stroheim would constantly one-up his rival by staging bedroom
scenes of startling intimacy and conviction. DeMille was obsessed with
mere scale, the martinet genius sneered, but was a provincial with no
imagination. With a curl of the lip, Von Stroheim conceded the only
director worthy of sharing his podium as the Master of Sin was Ernst
Lubitsch, of the famed 'touch that means so much'.
During von Stroheim's SalammbЇ, audiences were unable to believe
Valentino and Swanson were not actually engaged in vigorous intercourse.
Justine and Juliette, von Stroheim's first talking picture, offered
Janet Gaynor as Justine and Louise Brooks as Juliette, with George
Arliss as the Marquis de Sade and von Stroheim as Satan. It would have
been banned in nineteen states were it not for a federal ruling
overturning the power of local authorities to 'suppress works of proven