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                                                       Hollywood Story

On March 7, 1936, publication of the short story "Most Gorgeous Thing." The New Yorker. Files on Parade.

From the author's experience during his time as a writer in Hollywood.

The woman, unnamed, is a stuck-up self-centered successful young actress ("You know my new contract? Five pictures a year and permission to do one outside picture for another company") who  delivers a monologue to her Broadway actress friend Lucille.

Here she talks about her late friend Eddie.

   I used to call him up any time I felt like it, four in the morning, and I'd tell him to whip over and cheer me up when I was blue or depressed. He'd come over, and we would get plastered, but he never took advantage of it except once. One night I came home from a party by myself, I mean I came home without an escort, only a married couple, and I wasn't a bit sleepy, so I called Eddie Mac and he came over and we started drinking out in the kitchen, just the two of us, and the first thing I knew Eddie had his arms around me and kissing my neck and God knows all he wasn't doing, and saying to  me, "You're the most gorgeous thing that ever came to this ill-fated town," meaning Hollywood. Imagine! Of course, naturally, I've had to handle a situation like that before. Well, whenever I've had to deal with a situation like that I've always considered the man, and I knew the best way to deal with Eddie Mac was to talk with him sensibly and reason with him ... He was very depressed and all, but he finally saw it my way, and the only unpleasant thing about it was I caught his cold. We went in my pool without any clothes on later, but I'd done that before without catching cold, so I must have got it from him.
   ... I like to get good and plastered every three or four months, and it's nice to know you can get somebody to drink with you that you can forget everything and not have to worry the next day about what did I do and all that.