[In a 1989 interview] There aren't many of us left who remember the Hollywood of those far-off days when pepper trees lined Vine Street, but I don't think contemporary writers have depicted it accurately. It was not a modern Sodom and Gomorrah, nor was the use of drugs commonplace. The few actors--and I do mean few--who did use them were called dope fiends, and their careers were usually wrecked by scandal. The worst thing my girlfriends and I ever did was roll our stockings below the knee and do a little necking with our beaus in rumble seats. We danced, we went to football games, and we read the poetry of
Edna St. Vincent Millay and the novels of [
F. Scott Fitzgerald]. We did drink, of course--it was mandatory during those days of Prohibition--but not to excess. On the whole it was an age of innocence . . . and I was one of the most innocent.
