Laughing Gas is a comic novel by P.G. Wodehouse, first published in the United Kingdom on September 25, 1936 by Herbert Jenkins, London, and in the United States on December 4, 1936 by Doubleday Doran, New York. It is set in Hollywood in the early 1930s (the Depression is mentioned twice) and is, compared to, say, Budd Schulberg's What Makes Sammy Run? (1941), a light-hearted and exclusively humorous look at the film industry and in particular at...
more
Laughing Gas is a comic novel by P.G. Wodehouse, first published in the United Kingdom on September 25, 1936 by Herbert Jenkins, London, and in the United States on December 4, 1936 by Doubleday Doran, New York. It is set in Hollywood in the early 1930s (the Depression is mentioned twice) and is, compared to, say, Budd Schulberg's What Makes Sammy Run? (1941), a light-hearted and exclusively humorous look at the film industry and in particular at child stars. Both Schulberg and Wodehouse describe the methods of all those would-be screenwriters and actors hunting for jobs, but Wodehouse's depiction is not at all serious or critical.
Drone Reginald Swithin, the third Earl of Havershot ("Reggie") is 28, unmarried, and has a face like a gorilla. As the new head of his family, he is assigned a delicate task by his Aunt Clara and by Plimsoll, the family lawyer: He is to go to Hollywood and look for Aunt Clara's son, his cousin Eggy, who it seems has got himself into trouble over there, and...
less
