HOLLYWOOD IN PERSON.

Auckland Star, Volume LX, Issue 272, 16 November 1929, Page 5 (Supplement)

HOLLYWOOD IN PERSON.

GOSSIP OF THE STUDIOS. (By MOLLIS MERRICK.); HOLLYWOOD (Cal.), Oct. IS. In the professional colony the most valuable asset is considered the "sense of nonsense." Have it for the screen, and you are made. Have it for private life, and your circle of friends is made. But a serious-minded type who cannot lift his sense of humour above w r ork loses out. A hostess is giving a party for a prominent man. On the morning of the affair a huge box of flowers arrives. On opening it, a card is found with the engraved message, "In deepest sympathy," sent by her guest of honour. A new boulevard theatre opens, and the friendly rival a few blocks away sends a hearse to stand before the door. All in fun. A Hollywoodito wanted to play a trick on Doug. Fairbanks when he went on one of his last Eastern trips. A live goose was found in the drawing room after the train got on its way. Some 1 two hours later a frantic telegram came , from the jokester: "Be careful of that i goose; highly trained. bird, and very valuable." ,To which the terse reply: "Too late, the cook wrung his neck an hour ago." Dan Totheroh, a playwright of no mean degree of brilliance, is one of the spontaneous ones in a village famed for a sense of nonsense. James Gleason and Lucille' Webster nonsense with the best of them. But now and again a professional nonsenser forgets his main asset when faced by some of the problems of the studios. Bob Benchley submitted one-act sketches to use for talkies. The titles, if I remember correctly, ran something like: "Mending the Furnace," "Learning to Play Bridge," and "The Next-door Neighbours." The studio told Benchley to take all three and put them together, linking them with a thread of sex. Benchley, who laughs successfully at everyone and everything in the world, got seriously wrong up over the order. Of course his friends in the village gave him the ha-, ha. And after a bit he learned to join in. But tfor a moment the well-known nonsense-sense deserted one B. Benchley. ' Why not? I get serious myself'sometimes around the first of the month. Thei majority of sound film enthusiasts base their enthusiasm on the fact that such artists as the Four Marx

Brothers, whom they have read about ill i the magazines and newspapers, would , be out of their reach were it not for I sound films. , I From smaller cities comes the cry: "Why, we are to see and hear Irene Bordoni, Marilynn Miller, George Arliss, Lawrence Tibbett, Tito Iluffo, and a score of other famous ones." But often from the same throats comes the request: "Can't they, try to improve the mechanism so that voices will have an individuality and identity, as they do in life or on the stage?" One thing a good many of these people do not realise. In comparing the talkie to the stage play they forget, perhaps, that they see and hear the stage play in a small theatre for a given sum—usually two dollars 50 cents and up —if the artist is a person of any consequence whatever. The talkie is given for 65 cents or less in a huge auditorium built expressly for silent film projection. 'And the tone is amplified outside the bounds o£ lism to fill that auditorium. 4 Yet, following a little experiment of my own, I dropped into a theatre last evening and. sat far back near the door. Over half the play was not understandable. from where I sat. and I am not troubled with bad hearing. I also labour under the hallucination that I understand the English language, although there, are those perhaps who feel that I ; don't dißplay it in my writing. I'm funny that way. There will be silent films in the future. Made for the deaf and for those not acquainted with the English language, so enthusiasts of pure pantomime need not lose heart. Meanwhile, more letters are arriving in every mail—each of them valuable documents for or against the talkie. Would I could publish them all, they are interesting reading. I shall choose extracts from the most telling of. them instead. If Peggy Hopkins Joyce startled New York with her; ermine pyjamas it is Ina Claire's turn to befuddle Hollywood with a red velvet bathrobe lined in ermine. Oh, yes, to be worn skinny side in. Perhaps Ina realises that nothing makes a girl feel so good as the touch of ermine, or chinchilla, or blue foxes. And grandpa thought he was some ! devil when he bought grandma a shot taffeta over crinoline! After seeing one hundred thousand dollar stars in million dollar productions, it chanced that I saw a little roll of celluloid which cost exactly two hundred dollars to make. It was made by a chap who has been working as assistant director in Hollywood studios several years. Charles Yidor, a Hungarian, does not receive screen credit for the simple and often routine work he contributes officially to the making of super-epics. So he made a picture for himself, with such money as he could scrape together and with the help of good friends who

asked no salary. He calls it "The Bridge" —it is taken from Ambrose Bierce's immortal story, "The Affair at Owl Creek Bridge." It was made with the tiniest type motion- picture camera — the little portables tourists often carry. Two men figure in the picture. I forget the names, but one is merely a flash. It is really the closing incident in a man s existence. The actors were not famous in the gelatine village. But the main character gave such a convincing portrayal of the varying emotions that pass through the human mind in its closing moments as to fascinate the audience to the exclusion" of everything else. The single reel has no titles, and is made without sound. You miss neither. The intent of this strange little bit is unmistakable. And the sincerity of the finished wdrk is obvious. The camera is used as a means of recording a slice of life. The greatest emotional effect in the picture is when the man, horrible in his anguish, runs toward the camera for some ten minutes —the camera the while receding. It makes everyone in the audience writhe at their impotence to help this harassed and pitiable creature, halfmad, and with a great knot of rope dangling from his neck.' ,

Either consciously or not Vidor has done the trick used by some of the greatest masters of the stage. This making the audience an active participant in the drama is the most telling gesture the stage has ever known. Max Bernhardt invariably has called upon it to put over his most tremendous effects. And this simple bit of gelatine strip, without colour, sound, great stars, good cameras, studio lights, or the other paraphernalia of great pictures, has tremendous power. It gives one a moment akin to the surging of the masses in Potemkin. The hurling of emotion out of the screen and into the audience is all too seldom seen.

This is the way most of our great directors are made—humble beginning, sniffed at by the great and arrived— tremendous simplicity which lack of money brings to art. Dr. Paul Fejos made a little picture and became a great director. Josef von Sternberg did the same thing.- Serge Vorkapitch and Ramon Florey stepped into places of prominence in the colony overnight when the results of their humble experiments with the camera became known. And now perhaps Chas. Vidor, who, if he carries the same sincerity into larger work, cannot fail. Donald Ogden Stewart will be the comedian in Marion Davis' next picture. Comedians have the best of it in the village these days. The comic faces are about worn out. But the humorous inflection and the delicate double entendre —not at all ignored in some of our recent movies—are new ground in motion picture making. Despite Hollywood's contention that production cannot be gone into with any degree of success on the east coast recent events have proved that the village of Hollywood must share honours to some extent with a field three thousand miles away;