There's an idea that Hollywood corrupted serious authors in the days when studios gave steady work to dozens of screenwriters. I'm not sure how often that happened. One possible example is Ben Hecht. After publication of Erik Dorn in 1921, he was hailed as a great new literary talent. (The book, with its sexually adventurous characters and staccato narration, is still fascinating today.) Five years later, after publishing several other novels, Hecht began a thirty-year film career. Though he continued cranking out books, his interest in serious fiction pretty much disappeared.
I Hate Actors! by Ben Hecht. Crown Publishers (1944), 221 pp.
A part-time screenwriter arrives in Hollywood to put the finishing touches on a script. He encounters a variety of standard film types: his agent, who will say anything to keep clients happy; the movie's blustery producer; three actors--the talentless lead, the former star who wants to restart his career, and the second lead who is kept in a drugged stupor by the studio; three actresses--the temperamental star, the young hopeful who has had the lead's child, and the dancer with a large snake and few clothes; plus secretaries and studio heads. When the actors start being murdered, the question is not only whodunit but also who's next. Suspicion falls on one character after another until the mystery is solved.
What Hecht appears to be trying to do is produce a novel reminiscent of the fast-talking comedies he and Charles MacArthur wrote a decade earlier. (Notable among them are the play "The Front Page" and the screenplay for Twentieth Century.) The characters, with the exception of the cynical screenwriter-narrator, are eccentric and overblown. The dialog, which makes up most of the narrative, seems to be yelled rather than spoken. All of this comes with a tone of unrelenting satire. Hecht skewers just about everybody, not in subtle or unusual ways, but with an excessiveness that he presumably thinks Hollywood deserves. Readers seeking over-the-top entertainment are likely to enjoy this book.