http://worldcat.org/entity/work/id/896942510

Hollywood Boulevard

"As actress Eleanore Whitney makes footprints in the wet concrete outside [Grauman's] Chinese Theatre, washed-up star John Blakeford strolls nonchalantly down Hollywood Boulevard and enters the Cafe Trocadero. There he telephones his agent, desperate for work, then holds a loud, fake conversation to convince onlookers that he is in demand. After telling Gary Cooper and other friends that he is doing 'magnificently, ' Blakeford's account at the Trocadero is closed because of overdue bills. Publisher Jordan Winslow approaches Blakeford and offers him $25,000 for a ghostwritten, serialized autobiography to appear in his gossip magazine, Modern truth. At home, Blakeford begins to dictate his thoughts and tells Martha, his maid, that only two women have truly been important in his life: his ex-wife Carlotta, and his lover, Alice, who broke his heart. Despite the author's complaints, Winslow orders the memoirs 'spiced up' and turned into The life and loves of John Blakeford. While in New York and then Malibu, California, Winslow's wife Alice worries that her husband will learn of her affair with Blakeford twelve years earlier when he reads Blakeford's memoirs. In Santa Barbara, Blakeford's daughter Patricia, who owns a flower shop with her mother, meets a vacationing scenarist from Occidental Studios, Jay Wallace. Jay falls in love with Pat, who explains that she hates Hollywood, having lived there with her estranged father until she was twelve. Although he claims to live a monk's life, Jay fails to convince Pat that their romance could work despite Hollywood. Winslow's venture with Blakeford, meanwhile, has been so successful that he is financing a new film vehicle for him at Occidental. During a visit to the Mission in Santa Barbara, Pat finally decides to accept Jay's proposal. To distract temperamental Occidental actress Flora Moore, Jay, the most junior author at the studio, is sent to rewrite her latest part. Later, at a loud nightclub, Hollywood couples, including the slightly intoxicated Jay and Flora, are photographed by reporters. Intending to punch the nightclub's bouncer, Jay unintentionally slugs Blakeford, and the incident appears in the newspaper. Pat and Jay end their engagement, and she asks her father to cancel the publication of his memoirs before exposing his family. Blakeford begins to realize the hurt he has caused, but Winslow refuses to terminate their contract. Alice asks Blakeford to spare her and shoots him when he insists he has no choice but to write of their relationship. After Winslow takes his wife away, Pat tells him that she and Jay still plan to marry. No one is aware of how badly Blakeford has been hurt. Later, when the police find Blakeford, Pat is arrested. Jay discovers that a dictaphone recorded the confrontation between Alice and Blakeford and blackmails Winslow into ending the memoirs. The recovering Blakeford then claims the gunshot wound was a self-inflicted accident, thereby exonerating both Pat and Alice"--AFI catalog, 1931-1940.

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