WILD WEST PICTURES.

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

WILD WEST PICTURES.

> ONLY ONE STAR LEFT. GONE—THE TWO-GUN HERO. ; KEN MAYNARD SURVIVES. ' • (Special Hollywood Correspondent.) Five years ago Western pictures were ; the backbone of the motion picture pro- • fession; to-day one lone man is making them. i The two-gun hero is gone. The hard- - riding, rapid-shooting bad-good-man p with steely grey eyes and iron biceps is ; fading from the celluloid scene. Avia- : tion has crowded him to the wall and talkies have drawn the curtain across • hie type for the time being. - That is why I went hunting Ken 1 Maynard, last of the Western stars, to 1 try to discover the reason for his being the ultimate hero ,of adventure out where there's room to spare. I found a great big Texan with plenty of youthful enthusiasm, a keen mind, laughing, grey eyes and a practical idea about movie making. Perhaps that practical idea of his is the reason why he stands to-day the last of the Western stars. Hoot Gibson, has gone into airplane pictures. He tied his trusty horse to the hitching post and abandoned his tall Stetson and woolly chaps for the 6lick leather jacket and modern helmet of the aviator. Colonel Tim McCoy finished his last pictures without making any definite arrangements to continue with more. He is off to Europe for a long vacation.

Jack Holt Retires. Jack Holt was making Westerns steadily up to a few months ago. H< has faded from the picture gently, ane there does not seem to be any reasont other than that producers are all tied U[ in new things and that the public mine is keyed to the new things producers arc planning to give them. Rex Bell, imported to take Tom Mix's place when that worthy decided tc abandon the lot where he had kinged il in his medium for many years, turned out to be a flivver in the Westerns. And Tom Mix himself, long since beginning to weary of the endless routine of saving the wide-eyed gingham clad girl by the last-minute aid of the priceless Tony-horse, is vaudevilling. He has been writing a lot of late. Will Rogers planted a seed in the Mix mind which he has never quite been able tc dislodge. Tom Mix longs for the tag ot humorist and columnist to crown the millions which making Westerns has brought him. All of which brings us back to Ken Maynard, the one man who is still making them and will continue to do so for five years to come —if contracts mean 'anything at all. I If you run the gauntlet of boots and saddles and broad-brimmed Stetsons and lariats and spurs and fancy bits in the ante-room, you enter the comparative quiet of the Maynard dressing room. And there you discover that the tall man with the white teeth and zeetful eyes makes Westerns because he has faith in them. He puts them over with the public and the producers because he has put them over with himself. He still thinks' the stories which he builds up with something general behind them are of vast interest. "Not art —I have no foolish notions about art," Maynard says, with a broad sweep of his great arm, "but entertainment and commercial value. I like to

link a story of the West up this way; the story of a man and a girl backgrounded by the story of a State, or of some tremendous development in the making of the West, which would react on the lives of those people. "I began my career as a stunt rider in a circus, and I've tried to keep myself in the sort of condition which makes continuous stunt riding possible. If you come on the lot with a hangover and a depression which even ten minutes in the shower won't drive off, how can you put zest and whoopee into an open air story. Nobody wants a half-dead cowboy hanging on to a galloping horse. He must be one with his animal. "I had an opportunity to go into another branch of this profession, doing the type of roles Milton Sills has popularised. But I chose to remain in Westerns, because I know that while I may be the only chap making them at present, there'll be a whole lot of th6m going six months from now. And I'll be that far ahead." The man who has stuck with Tarzan, his horse, anVl with the stories of the open-country is one of the most enthusiastic aviators in the colony. "The old boat" is his main source of recreation, and a sport in which his wife reluctantly shares. Maynard has no sympathy witn the man or woman who "goes Hollywood." He has lived quietly in the colony and has amassed a considerable fortune from investments. He thinks of motion" pictures not in terms of persona! glory, but as a medium providing intelligent -and educational- amusement to the world. And he is the last and only star left in the Western sky. "Jealousy," the late Jeanne Eagels' second all-talking drama, will be released at an early date. It is a powerful dramatic story, with Paris as its locale. Frederic March plays opposite the star. Helene Chadwick, one of the most popular stars on the screen in the day of silent productions, returns to the film? to play the feminine lead in "Men Are Like That," an all-talking picture featuring Hal Skelly. Lee Kohlmar, who plays one of the most important roles in "The Kibitzer," an all-talking comedy featuring Harry Green, Mary Brian, and Neil Hamilton, speaks only three words in the produc- ! tion. He relies mainly on pantomime.