HOLLYWOOD IN PERSON.

Auckland Star, Volume LX, Issue 307, 28 December 1929, Page 5 (Supplement)

HOLLYWOOD IN PERSON.

GOSSIP OF THE STUDIOS. (By MOLLIE MERRICK.) HOLLYWOOD, November 20. Ethel Clayton returns to her first} love, the screen,- and sets a lot of memories going once again. She was once the golden-haired star of silent dramas which featured Arthur Johnston. Henry Walthal, also in that cycle, is a shining light now in talkies. Ethel Clayton is of the group which ca,ught time by the forelock and took to vaudeville

and to the legitimate when the Clara Bows and Alice Whites began their day. Now she returns for a role in "Hit the Deck," with a talking technique well perfected —something a few of the silent sisters'wouldn't mind having. Rose Tapley and Mabel Van Buren are two others who faded from sight a while back, and have returned successfully from hibernations in stock theatres and various other places. Rose Tapley played leads in a day when a young man was content to take a box of candy or a bunch of flowers one evening a week to his girl. She had a good, comfortable waistline, and the sort of silhouette that type of girl usually possessed. When Gloria Swanson came along with her match-like slimness it threw the generously-curved lady into the discard. Dimples and rounded cheeks lost out. Talking pictures— r noisy, difficult, say the worst you can of them—rare bringing a varied type back to the screen for our entertainment.

I am becoming more and more interested in the way talkies are projected in different cities. My readers have convinced me through their letters that they do not enjoy the type of projection Ave in Hollywood are familiar with. We have the finest projection extant, naturally. I saw a very poor projection of Gloria Swanson's latest picture in San Francisco recently. The voice snapped off entirely during the run—of course in a vital spot —and what we knew must be important dialogue went by the board, while the figures mouthed and no sound came forth. The audience sat patiently for some five minutes until the strip was readjusted, and then the story went on with the gap unexplained. Some time later action in the piece gave us the clue for what must have taken place in the conversation we missed. One of my editors assures me that New Yorkers have a trick of applauding when such illsynchronised moments occur, and continue their applause until the reel is turned back to the spot where the dialogue was lost.

Ronald Colman seems due to make permanent his success as a talking artipt. When "Condemned" is released he will go to work immediately upon "Raffles"—a vehicle which will give him charming opportunity for his somewhat different humour. It is an opportune time to revive "Raffles." An entire generation has grown up eince it was the vogue, and it, could be given in no better way than with an Englishman who is at once handsome and cast by Nature for the gentleman adventurer's role.

Seriously speaking, this has been a popular way of seeing the inside of the local gaol. Stars will have their photographs on their cheques, just as they love large monograms on cigarettes, automobile doors, and even, occasionally, in neon light on their housetops. A few good inside jobs in which tr.usted employees have had access to cheque books have resulted in some autograph collecting which has brought about permanent results. Some of the best bunco put over in the village never finds it 6 way to print. Famous faces must be saved.

Out here where snow is rolled oats dipped in paraffin, and slush is made of salt and marble dust, one becomes so accustomed to synthetic effects that the real thing is unbelievable. When I heard that the hill on which I live was afire I approached home from the Boul Hollywood rather sceptical. Leaping flames and jostling crowds looked just like another movie set. But the layers of' ashes and soot which had accumulated on everything were. real enough. And after interviewing a few husky firemen scuttling over the premises I glanced into the mirror to discover that I could drop on one knee.and do a mammy song very convincingly. There's nothing synthetic about fire in'this village.

Billy Blees, of Detroit, has the right 1 idea. When I sent him some souvenirs of the stars he humorously suggested that autographs, "preferably on- blank cheques," .would be the ideal way to remember your favourite artist—pretty good for nine years. The village, caught in the grip of an Indian summer, so unpleasantly hot that the picture is entirely ruined, fights flames and looks regretfully toward the; tacks of new winter clothing which it cannot wear. 1 Clad in the cast-offs of the summer the populace gathered to watch the grass fires which are the prerogative of July and August scorch the November hills. Producers, sweltering in a heat which is a torture in football season, count up the work lost in recent storage fires, and put wry marks against the profit list. Insurance carried on films made merely pays the value of the film. What cannot be replaced is the time lost. And films are sold for a specified release date. Almost every producer in Hollywood lost a couple of days' work when the largest storage factory in the village burned. At that, some of them forgot their own losses in a little private hallelujah over a rival's ill luck. Fred Karno, who discovered Charles Spencer Chaplin in the London music halls, is in Hollywood on a five-year comedy contract. He has made two valuable contributions to the laughter of gelatine-loving people. Stan Laurel, for years Chaplin's understudy, is another of his discoveries. Hal Roach has coaxed Karno to movieland to see what' such a mind for humour can do with the materials furnished by this hub of. the entertainment world. Charlie Chaplin says this of him: "All the equipment and training I brought to films I gained in Fred Karno's famous pantomime troupe. There could have been no better school for a motion picture mime." In 1914 Charlie Chaplin's salary was 70 dollars a week. At that time Mack Sennett saw him in New York in Karno's production, "A Night In An English Music Hall," and offered the comedian twice his salary to come to California to mako a motion picture. Stan Laurel was then Chaplin's understudy. In the brief fifteen years which have intervened some dozen pictures have made a gelatine king of Chaplin. Stan Laurel, during the year just past, has come into his own, together with Babe Hardy, the other member of one of the funniest duos in cinema history. Two years after Chaplin came to Hollywood Stan Laurel, his understudy in the Karno troupe, went on the vaudeville circuit with an act based on an imitation of Chaplin, who, in that twenty-four months had made an indelible impression on the public. In 1917 Chaplain ran into Laurel in Los Angles. Laurel was still playing vaudeville, and Chaplin persuaded him to . come into motion pictures. Chaplin has guided the course of many peaple into , the channels of success. But Stan j Laurel's barque was slower in reaching port than some of the others. Twelve years intervened before Stan Laurel became a vital figure in cinema ' history; then only when he joined forces , with the tremendous Babe Hardy, thus 1 capitalising his assets. Together these two have developed a j new type of comedy. It has not lost i through talk, as with most of the funny i men. Rather is the humour intensified. ( Babe Hardy has a voice which supplements his funny face, and Laurel's weep- £ ing technique is appreciated by a rapidly s increasing audience. z

Now into the field comes the man who made these two —a little genius of pantomime, who has never faced a motion picture camera before; a man to whom gelatine strip is a mythical source of fabulous wealth to those children of his, whom he once made happy with a few pounds a week.

"But wait a minute," says Karno; "when you're talking about fourteen or fifteen pounds a week don't forget it was a phenomenal salary. We gave it to Charlie to keep his mind off motion pictures. And he waddled right into them, cane and all." The voracious village claims another name from the pages of amusement victory. Movie moguls find the gaming room at the casino a quicker way to turn over money than the long wait for the dear public to express its approval or disapproval: Around its walls and half screened from public view by long citron brocades are booths for heavy play only. The plutocrats of filmland run the play up into dizzy thousands on a single turn of the wheel. Few old world casinos are more beautiful than this one, begun primarily to cater to the celluloid land three hours away, and its easily-made money. A corn-fed lady from the wide-open spaces downed her mint julep and strolled over tlie blackjack table. She put down a stack of dollars and glanced at her two cards, and looked over at the dealers top card. "Ehen drawing out another stack of dollars she cried, "Raise yell!" The dealer shook his head in negation. "Another card, madame? Please hurry; you are holding up the game." "Take your time, Emma," admonishes her companion, a lady in the fat and forty cycle with a voluptuous upper lip painted in a wobbly way over her thin and final mouth. "Young man, remember everyone has to begin sometime, and you are paid to serve people here, not hurry them." A bystander stepped over to help Emma out, and discovered that she thought she was playing stud poker and wanted to raise the dealer. "Anyhow," she observed, as her last stack of silver was raked in, "I'm having a grand time." Writers with a day free jump into a plane; arrive in Mexico for luncheon, play a round or two at the tables, and are back in movieland by tea-time. (Only tea is unpopular in Hollywood). Said a lady at our elbow: "The 'plane is going, Arnold, and you are working to-night." Arnold (in a peeve): "Don't be indecent —c/n't you see luck is coming my way?" Waiters hurrying through long shining corridors, bearing frosty glasses to serve in the warm sunshine under the palm trees; the strumming of guitars and flicking of painted eyelids; camera faces bent anxiously over blue-covered manuscripts'—studying dialogue within the sound of the purring wheel and the croupier's rake, and flexing the right arm now and then. "How soon they go geography," murmurs my companion. "What do you mean?" v "The gulp of Mexico " Going geography is the national pastime when Hollywood slips across the border to welcome in the. spring.