Esquire (March 1941)

This was back in 1938 when few people except the Germans knew that they had already won their war in Europe. People still cared about art and tried to make it out of everything from old clothes to orange peel and that was how the Princess Dignanni found Pat. She wanted to make art out of him.

The day was dark from the outset, and a California fog crept everywhere. It had followed Pat in his headlong, hatless flight across the city. His destination, his refuge, was the studio, where he was not employed but which had been home to him for twenty years.

Pat Hobby, the writer and the man, had his great success in Hollywood during what Irving Cobb refers to as 'the mosaic swimming-pool age--just before the era when they had to have a shinbone of St Sebastian for a clutch lever.'

Esquire (October 1940)

'I haven't got a job for you,' said Berners. 'We've got more writers now than we can use.'

'I didn't ask for a job,' said Pat with dignity. 'But I rate some tickets for the preview tonight--since I got a half credit.'

Beneath a great striped umbrella at the side of a boulevard in a Hollywood heat wave, sat a man. His name was Gus Venske (no relation to the runner) and he wore magenta pants, cerise shoes and a sport article from Vine Street which resembled nothing so much as a cerulean blue pajama top.