Among the tourist hordes on the "walk of fame" last week, you could feel Hollywood casting its spell. They genuflected at the names of actors and film-makers embedded in pink stars in the pavement. Gloria Swanson. John Wayne. Will Smith. Francis Ford Coppola. Quentin Tarantino. Generations of glamour and talent, ringed in brass and close enough to touch. Open-air vans and double-decker buses packed with camera-toting passengers swayed past palm trees and the Chinese Theatre en route to celebrity home tours – which are in truth celebrity hedge tours, because you seldom glimpse the mansions behind the shrubbery. No matter, the tours are extremely popular: there are now about 40 operators, up from just a handful a few years ago. With an azure sky and balmy sunshine, the only way to detect autumn was in the billboards for Captain Phillips, 12 Years a Slave and Gravity: serious fodder, after summer bubblegum, for Oscar season. After arecord-breaking summer box office, and critical acclaim for best picture contenders, how apt that the famous 45ft letters on Mount Lee have been stripped, smeared with primer and repainted with 255 gallons of high-reflective white paint. Hollywood, quite literally, gleaming.
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