In 1933, West bought a farm in eastern Pennsylvania but soon got a job as a contract scriptwriter for Columbia Pictures and moved to Hollywood. He published a third novel, "A Cool Million", in 1934. None of West's three works sold well, earning him less than $800, so he spent the mid-1930s in financial difficulty, sporadically collaborating on screenplays. Many of the films he worked on were B movies, such as "Five Came Back" (1939). It was at this time that West wrote "The Day of the Locust." He took many of the settings and minor characters of his novel directly from his experience living in a hotel on Hollywood Boulevard.