Hollywood celebrates its own first century – back in 1987

Emma Beddington

Celebrating Hollywood’s charms and contradictions on its self-declared centenary in 1987, Clancy Sigal offered appropriately cinematic ‘things you wouldn’t believe’ evidence of his credentials: ‘I’ve seen my favourite stars drunk, in bed… walked into Joan Crawford’s dressing room when she was naked… I nearly got caught in the crossfire when a Hollywood producer shot his love-rival in the cojones… I’ve been blacklisted, blackmailed by a Hollywood columnist and libelled in a full-page ad in the Hollywood Reporter.’

Even with that kind of expertise, what was there still to say about Hollywood 100 years on? That it had cleaned up its act since its ‘lusty origins’; that the ‘gorgeous, amazing, terrifying’ screen monsters and goddesses of its golden age were extinct and, above all, that it was now run on dynastic lines. ‘Nepotism, once an open scandal, is proudly practised as a domestic virtue,’ Sigal commented. ‘Today Hollywood is in the hands of its kids. There are even third-generation agents.’ These nepo babies were not keen to acknowledge their good fortune: ‘I’ve seldom spoken to a child of a Hollywood First Family who candidly admitted they’d ridden to fame on the back of their more famous parent.’

The accompanying photoshoot proves Sigal’s assertion that Hollywood has ‘the most beautiful gene pool in the world’: Lemmons, Douglases, Sheens, Pecks and Bridges horse around wholesomely; Jamie-Lee Curtis and Janet Leigh share a string of pearls and Carrie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds a plastic cow.Where the balance of power lay was less clear: But ‘Gaze deeply into their practised stares,’ instructed Sigal. But, says Sigal, ‘they belong not to Hollywood or even to each other. They are our property.’ Were commercial pressures condemning it to blandness, would all those sons and daughters have a sclerotic effect (‘Hollywood will never die of either hypocrisy or nepotism, which are as natural to it as LA’s perennial sunshine,’ Sigal commented)? Thankfully, a raw, irrepressible energy remained. ‘The real moviemaking spirit is down there in the bear pit, sweating, hustling, cheating, conniving, chewing cigars and belching dyspeptically