LADIES IN WAITING

    The other day I was slogging through the 1934 Los Angeles Times trying to find a review of Mad Hatter's Village. Maybe, I thought, there would be some evidence that Liam O'Flaherty actually wrote the book. I didn't find that review (I'll try again later), but I did find one for Ladies in Waiting, an unfamiliar title by an unfamiliar author. It turned out that I hadn't just missed it in the standard bibliographical sources: The book isn't mentioned. And I was surprised to learn that Rian James (1899-1953) was a fairly well known writer in the 1930s. He had eight other novels to his credit as well as a raft of screenplays, including Forty-Second Street. How he's managed to become buried in obscurity is something I don't know.

    Ladies in Waiting by Rian James. Alfred H. King (1934), 285 pp.
    Ziegfeld girl Judy Kemp decides to try her luck in Hollywood. She moves in with Flo Burns, who's had more experience trying to break into the movies, and sets out to find work. She makes a big impression on studio dance director Billy Carey, but he (like everyone else she meets) doesn't offer her a job. Judy soon becomes smitten with screenwriter Dean Barclay. He's a decent guy who likes her well enough. But he won't sleep with her because B-list actress Lorna Lansing has won his heart. Lorna leads Dean on while engaging in an affair with his best friend, Tony D'André, the randy husband of film diva Sheila Nardi. While they're deceiving Sheila, George Westmore, Lorna's jealous ex-husband, enters the picture. He's nasty when drunk and could break up the amorous chain.
    From the title readers might expect the novel to focus on the ordeals and accomplishments of young women drawn to movie career. And there's quite a bit of that, as Judy scopes out the Hollywood scene. She's unimpressed by the seduction techniques of the men she meets, for example, and is flabbergasted by the goings-on at wild party given by a studio casting director. Mostly, though, the book centers on the sexual activities of its main characters. Because James hasn't portrayed them in any depth, he's almost forced into melodrama to keep the story going. His keen ear for dialog provides some mitigation for the silliness of the plot, though probably not enough to attract any but the most dedicated modern reader of Hollywood fiction.