Alfred Hardin Frederick — You’ve Never Lived in Hollywood

20 March 1892 – after 1941

Alfred Hardin Frederick wrote about Hollywood from the crowded side of the studio gate. His poems follow extras waiting for work, stunt performers taking risks while stars take credit, child actors’ mothers fencing over parts, publicity men inflating salaries, and broke hopefuls dining lavishly because appearance may be their last usable capital. The satire is broad, but casting calls, glycerine tears, Cooper-Hewitt lamps, day rates, Poverty Row, and backstage cafés give it the speed and authority of inside knowledge. Hollywood appears as both liberation and trap: a place where a life might change overnight, talent is optional, publicity indispensable, and motion pictures remain a “captive art” awaiting a braver use. Designed by Frederick’s wife, Edna Burke Frederick, You’ve Never Lived in Hollywood preserves thirty-five lively poems from the dream factory’s silent-era edge, mixing dialogue, song, stepped refrains, dialect, and comic theatricality.

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Catalogue

Poets in Hollywood

Associations

Film and Hollywood Poetry and Journalism Satire and Comic Verse

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

Bibliography

Frederick, Alfred Hardin. You’ve Never Lived in Hollywood. Cover design by Edna Burke Frederick. Hollywood Publishing Company, 1926. 57 numbered pages. LCCN 27001495; OCLC 18356086; Open Library OL6697830M.

Works About the Author

George Washington University Archives. “Student, Yearbook, and Alumni Records for the Class of 1915.” Research lead concerning Alfred Hardin Frederick.

Gevinson, Alan, editor. Within Our Gates: Ethnicity in American Feature Films, 1911–1960. University of California Press, 1997. Filmographic reference for Freddie Burke Frederick.

HathiTrust Digital Library. You’ve Never Lived in Hollywood. University of California copy, handle 2027/uc1.$b273402. Public-domain Google digitization.

“Initiates.” The Record of Sigma Alpha Epsilon, vol. 33, no. 2, May 1913, p. 233. Lists Alfred Hardin Frederick, George Washington University class of 1915.

Library of Congress. Catalogue record 27001495 for You’ve Never Lived in Hollywood.

Los Angeles Examiner staff records, newspaper morgue, and 1940s city directories remain research leads for Frederick’s editorial career and later life.

Open Library. “Alfred Hardin Frederick.” Author record OL2440604A, work OL7774314W, edition OL6697830M.

Rumph, Henry W., and Mary Rumph Frederick. The Rumph and Frederick Families: Genealogical and Biographical. 1942, p. 184. Gives Frederick’s birth, marriage, wartime rank, 1941 address, newspaper position, and immediate family.