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In this chapter, focus is give to Mae Murray’s screen image and her determination to shed her frocks for furs and negligees. The Leonards move into the luxurious Hotel Des Artistes and entertain lavishly. She works with new directors, Leonce Perret and George Fitzmaurice in such screen hits as The Twin Pawns, The A.B.C. of Love, On with the Dance, and The Right to Love. The Leonards sailed for Europe on a belated honeymoon. In Paris, Murray lunches with Olive Thomas before Thomas’ mysterious death after drinking mercury bichloride. While in the French capital, Murray undergoes a cosmetic procedure that takes years off her appearance.

This chapter gives a wide-ranging view of Ziegfeld as both a beloved boss and a traitorous one. The close-knit family of Ziegfeld stars, including Eddie Cantor, Fanny Brice, Will Rogers, W. C. Fields, and Bert Williams, is torn apart by the Actors Equity strike of 1919. Ziegfeld’s stars remain loyal to him until they learn that he has joined the Producing Managers Association. When his stars leave, despite his good treatment of them, Ziegfeld is personally affronted. The strike ends, but Ziegfeld’s life continues to be chaotic. Olive Thomas and another showgirl with whom he allegedly had an affair commit suicide. People begin to wonder if there is a Ziegfeld curse. Burke remains loyal to her husband, but she questions his loyalty as his attentions to Marilyn Miller grow more conspicuous. He makes preparations for a show written specifically for Miller that ultimately serves as a hymn to the youth and beauty that Ziegfeld feared was disappearing in the Jazz Age.

This chapter argues that the Hollywood novel became an increasingly politicized endeavor following the industry scandals of the early 1920s. While some insiders wrote novels as propaganda to defend the industry, others looked to the novel as the only way to circumvent the stranglehold that the Hays Office began enacting over film culture. Such a split can be seen most clearly in Rupert Hughes’s Souls for Sale and Harry Leon Wilson’s Merton of the Movies. Where Souls for Sale doubled down on its defense of Hollywood despite the scandal that continued to make headlines through its serialization, Merton of the Movies set the standard for critiquing the industry between the lines without causing the commotion that other damning publications would. In its aim to cast a critical eye on the industry, then, the first generation of the Hollywood novel conceived of the Hays Office as its official antithesis, the line that begged to be crossed.

Critics complain that Ziegfeld has begun to imitate himself in his shows, and this chapter tells how he pulls the Follies out of their rut. He joins the rooftop entertainment craze by transforming the New Amsterdam roof into a top-notch venue for an offshoot of the Follies, the Midnight Frolic. Ziegfeld employs Viennese designer and architect Joseph Urban to design the rooftop, beginning a long association; he hires Lucile Duff Gordon to design the costumes. Ziegfeld enlivens the Follies when he hires cowboy philosopher Will Rogers to perform his lariat act. The first bump in the Ziegfelds’ marriage occurs when Burke learns of Ziegfeld’s infatuation with a new showgirl, Olive Thomas. But Burke becomes his sole focus when he learns he is about to be a father. Ziegfeld plans his next two shows—the Ziegfeld Follies of 1916 and his first non-Follies musical since his union with Held, The Century Girl—to be celebrations of his child.