Screen Stars and Films

Auckland Star, Volume LVII, Issue 132, 5 June 1926, Page 28

Screen Stars and Films

With the casting of the " sixty most beautiful extra girls" in Hollywood in •' Padlocked," Director Allan Dwan modestly admits that he has cast something over 10,000 beautiful girls in his productions during his 20 yea~s as a director. Mary Brian has been assigned one tl the Woßt important roles in her brief and brilliant screen career. She will play one of the featured parts in "Beau Geste, -, Herbert Brenon'a production dealing with the French Foreign Legion's most dramatic campaign in the African Sahara. The Gish sisters—Lillian and Dorothy —will be seen again in ''Romola," the film version of George Eliot's novel of the same name. It deals with adventure and romance in the stormy days of old Florence. Intrigue, revolution, and a, very human love story have been woven by tlie master hand of Henry King into a magnificently mounted production. Although Florence is the main background of " Romola," important scenes, including a thrilling fight at sea, were shot in the port of Leghorn, and at Pisa, with its famous leaning tower. Most of the actors in the cast, except the principals, were natives of Florence, many of them distinguished members of the nobility. The Gish sisters are together in this picture for the first time since " Orphans of the Storm." Lilian is Romola. and Dorothy appears as Tessa, the little peasant girl, who lives so happily until she falls in love with the wicked Tito. "Romola" is produced by Henry Kng, the now famous drector of "The White Sister" and "Stella Dallas."

During the filming of Rex Beach's "The Goose Woman," a number of goslings and young pigs were used as atmosphere, but the picture took so long in producing that the animals had to be renewed to preserve the appearance of youth. The cast of the picture includes Jack Pickford, Constance Bennett, Louise Dresser, George Cooper, Mare MacDermott, and Spottiswood Aitken. Those who make films .profess a peculiar understanding of that subtle thing called public taste (states a writer in the "Daily Mail"). Unfortunately, this knowledge of theirs is too often a misunderstanding. When a good and novel film is made, as happens now and then, the fllm-makere spend years in imitating, not the good film's profounder success, but the inessentials. "The Four 'Horsemen of the Apocalypse" gave rise to a thousand tangos, pushed into indifferent films for no reason: "The Covered Wagon , ' ha« filled cinemas since with cattle and bearded cowmen. The millions who constitute the film public are mostly plain folk and do not want intellectual subleties. But there are emotional subtleties common to all mankind since history began, and there are two things which alway* please. One, which is a narrative, answers the old demand, "Tell mc a story." The other, melodrama, replies to the age-old query: "And what happened next?" II is the saving grace of the cinema that, despite its repulsive ostentation and tigly ornate houses, despite its inane sex interest, its interpolated cabaret scenes, it hag managed, on the whole, to remain true to melodrama and to narrative and to its power to evoke tears and laughter. The film public hae Jittle chance of expressing its wishes directly; it goes" to the picture-houses regularly, taking the good with the bad But let * etar who has become famous for acting in good and exciting films act carelessly ence or twice, or appear in poo* pictures, and that popular star will be faced with retirement or severe reform. It was the public, and not the film magnates, who crowned Chaplm with success and made Felix the Cat a household possession; for it appreciates the best, even if it cannot see clearly enough to detect the middling from 'the bad. Now, England is about to enter the film arena boldly. In the end it is the public who will judge whether British films can, as we all heliev*, provide romance true to the ordinary man and woman's better dreams, sensation which strikes deep into the common emotions, romance, which is desired of all. and humour •which is so true to life that it wins universal acclamation.

If it is wrong to marry for money, is it also reprehensible to marry in order to receive seven million dollars from the estate of a deceased uncle, who mads immediate marriage a condition ? Buster Keaton in " Seven Chances," his next picture, is caught in this predicament. He decides to tell the girl after the wedding, and slie promptly leaves him. Wife hunting is Buster's next adventure. ■, Ben Lyon, First National featured player, has been signed by Robert Kane to play the prinicpal role in his next production, "The Great Deception," adapted from the George Gibbs novel, j ''The Yellow Dove." Aileen Pringle j already has been signed for the role of I the heroine. This picture will mark the; first joint appearance of these two j popular players. J I Laughter, not slaughter, is the ruling theme of '"Behind the Front," Paramount's contribution to the story of the great war. "Behind the Front" is a comedy of the A.E.F., which features the humour, adventures, and disillusionment of a couple of "doughboys," played by that inimitable character team, Wallace Beery and Raymond Hatton. Their roles are taken from life, for every battalion had two such characters, who served to furnish laughs for their "buddies" and plenty of mfxups and trouble for their superiors. Through the whole story runs a fine thread of romance, with beautiful Mary Brian playing the role of a red cross worker in France. The picture was directed by Edward Sutherland, who directed Raymond Griffith in "A Regular Fellow." The supporting cast includes Chester Conklin, Richard Arlen, Louise Lorraine and Gertrude Astor.

"The Wanderer," famous Biblical stage spectacle recently dramatised on the screen by Paramount has established what it is said to be a new'record for size and beauty of motion picture sets. Like a series of paintings by a master hand, each scene was made pictorially perfect. To gain this desired effect required months of work—not only in the actual production of the picture but in its preparation. Each scene was written with the thought of beauty always in mind and each was filmed to that it would balance and blend with the rest. Even the thousands of costumes in the mob scenes for the picture were made chieflly with a view towards the pictorial effects obtained from them. Raoul Walsh, who directed, hn a reputation of being one of the few directors in the industry possessing the ability to film beautiful settings and at the same time retain the spirit of the story. He made "The Thief of Bagdad," it will be recalled. The featured cast in "The Wanderer" includes Ernest Torrence, William Collier, jr., Wallace Beery, Tyrone Power, Greta Nissen, Kathlyn Williams, Kathlyn Hill, George Rigas and Holmes Herbert. " Ypres," the next war film, should prove one of the biggest attractions that this country has ever known, as all the survivors of that inferno during the Great War will be anxious to live over again—at a distance—those glorious days, and this will be the first opportunity which their relatives and friends have had to realise adequately what they owe to these great men. The aim of the picture is to show the critical moments in the holding of the salient, and the acts of personal heroism displayed there. It is fittingly dedicated to our New Zealand contingent in the words on the cenotaph, "To Our Glorious Dead." Opening on the first battle of Ypres, with the loss and recapture of Gheluvet, the capture of Hill 60, the second battle, in which the Germane introduced poison gas to the West Front and in which "Geddes details" achieved immortality, the launching of the trench raids, which were vital in the sapping of the German moral, the grand assault of the Messlnes Ridge with the exploding of 19 mines, which had been 18 months in preparation, and the attack on Passchehdaele, the picture closes when the.road to the channel forts has forever been made impassable to the German forces. It is a glorious tribute to the British Army, with not one studied appeal to the emotions, and for that very reason, it is emotionally overpowering.