From Rags to Riches

According to legend, the career of Academy Award winning actress Lana Turner was dependent on her being "discovered" by a show business executive while she was sitting at the malt counter of a Hollywood drug store:

As a 16-year-old student at Hollywood High, Turner decided to skip a typing class and buy a Coke at the Top Hat Cafe located on the southeast corner of Sunset Boulevard and McCadden Place. There, she was spotted by William R. Wilkerson, publisher of the Hollywood Reporter, and his wife Tichi. Wilkerson was struck by her beauty and physique, and referred her to the actor/comedian/talent agent Zeppo Marx. Marx's agency immediately signed her on and introduced her to film director Mervyn LeRoy, who cast her in her first film, 1937's They Won't Forget.

Flash forward 70 years and you realize that things haven't changed all that much. The charming tale of the discovery of 2008 Academy Award winning screenwriter Diablo Cody.

Cody, whose real name is Brook Busey, caught the eye of manager Mason Novick after he found her sexy blog while surfing for porn online several years ago.

Who says Hollywood's values are out of step with middle America?

BTW, that sound you hear is envious City Pages alumni all over town slapping their foreheads in dismay over their failed strategy of trying to get noticed by writing and publishing their precious, edgy prose while not dropping their pants for the camera.

This precedent also suggests the next local blogger to attract the attention of "talent" surfing Hollywood moguls will be someone from Anti-Strib (not safe for work, unless perhaps you're employed by the William Morris Agency.)

Let it be known that Fraters Libertas made the decision at its inception not to dabble in the flesh trade. Sure, we've got the abs for it. But ultimately we seek to be praised and adored for our talents rather than our beauty.




{crickets} {crickets}




.... while we wait for that to happen, we can also wait for the values of Hollywood to change. We'll never have a media mogul stumble onto us while he's surfing for porn. But we're in, if there's ever a fervent revival of interest in say .... Rudy Boschwitz.

Yes, still on the second page of his Google search after all these years (thanks to some Google bombing done before we even knew what that meant).

Note to Hollywood, my script for Ru-no (about a middle age man's brave refusal to not close his plywood business after his election to the Senate) is just about done.