HOLLYWOOD IN PERSON.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIV, Issue 83, 8 April 1933, Page 5 (Supplement)

HOLLYWOOD IN PERSON.

GOSSIP OF THE STUDIOS.

(By MOLLIS MERRICK.}

HOLLYWOOD (Calif.), March 7.

A grey-faced man with greying hair walked slowly down the long aisle of the commissary at the M.G.M. studios to his private luncheon room As he passed through the vast field of tables someone started clapping, and soon the entire room rang with hearty applause. Louis B. Mayer smiled and held his head higher, while some of the drag left his footsteps.

Fifteen minutes earlier, facing the entire personnel of the vast Btudio, he had put it to them calmly that they would either take a 50 per cent salary cut or close the studio. The actors, troopers all, took it "on the chin" with a smile. Not a word of dissent, not a moan. The directors joined them also without question.

But one demur, and that was quiekly silenced; a foreigner, who shall be nameless, protested:

"But how can a man who has been accustomed to spending 1000 dollars a week have the things to which he is accustomed with 500 to spend?"

Lionel Barrymore's voice broke in, dry and impatient: "That's like a guy complaining he hasn't got a manicure when he's on the way to the guillotine." A wave of laughter, and the matter was settled in the best way.

Hollywood's studios, running on the ragged edge of bankruptcy during the weeks preceding bank holidays, were harder hit than any other industry by the national banking crisis of February and March. Motion pictures had borrowed their limit from banks, and the Hollywood salaries were beyond any level ever established in the history of the entertainment world. Hollywood expenditures were • phenomenal —Hollywood waste historic —Hollywood hokum the world's jest.

The Hollywood of to-morrow will be different.

Universal Studio, under an act of heaven plea, suspended all contracts of actors, directors, executives, and others for the period of the emergency. That there will be ultimate contention over this is inescapable. The Fox voluntary salary holiday of one month puts that studio on a still different basis from any other in the colony, and proves the workers to be willing to pull 100 per cent to keep gelatine entertainment alive.

Meetings at Paramount, R.K.0., and other studios will meet the problem of keeping alive for the next two months each in their own way, by putting the matter up to the actor 3, writers, and executives. All seem agreed that the show must go on.

Last Saturday evening an armoured truck brought cash to pay off all salaried people on the M.G.M. lot who were receiving 100 dollars a week and less. The' line formed several blocks long. Outside the studio gates their families waited ready to dash to the grocery stores.

The 50 per cent cut takes care of lesser employees in this way. Salaries of 50 dollars or more a week are cut with the minimum of 37 dollars and 50 cents, while lesser salaries are cut with a minimum of 15 dollars a week.

The "Gilded Village," which has been running so close to ruin for weeks now —the scene of gaiety, recklessness, hard work, loyalty, and sheer foolhardiness and waste —is nearer to its salvation through this drastic banking move than anything that could have happened.

The Hollywood avalanche—well on its downward way—has been checked. The entire cinema industry may be saved from disastrous general failure if everyone stands by and if the principals in this drama realise during the coming weeks that this was the most inflated community in the world.

Now that most themes have been exhausted in movie making, the technical masterpiece is quite in order. "King Kong" is acknowledged even by rival producers as exceeding anything in this field motion pictures have yet attempted. To put it briefly, if you see a gigantic ape some 50ft high, leisurely stepping from storey to storey of the Empire State Building, using the window ledges as steps, and pausing from time to time to regard affectionately a little squirming doll it holds in its gigantic hand— well, you are apt to think you are dreaming. If the camera comes a little closer in and in that doll you recognise Fay Wray, you know that either you are dreaming or that movies have invented something you know not. The last guess is correct. They have developed the technical end of picture making into a fine art, and in "King Kong" they have pushed this art to its fantastic limits to make the most thrill, ing and entertaining phantasmagoria of modern times.

"King Kong" starts off quite tamely with a handful of men aboard a mysterious ship bound for an unknown destination. There is much difficulty about getting a young lady for the trip,

and the explanation of that difficulty and ultimate solving of it make eome pretty dull footage in the beginning of the picture, all of which could have been avoided by good cutting and editorial knowledge of where the etory begins. The story of Kong really begins aboard ship when the crew are ready to mutiny because they have been out of sight of land for weeks, on a mysterious and sinister errand, and they want to know .where they are going and why. Had the producers cut in there, they would have had a picture which opened with suspense, with a correct setting, and with the idea of using dialogue for what dialogue was intended. The dialogue in the first part of Kong is just so much talk; needless in view of the fact that every act is played out for you with all the exaggerated pantomime of old silent pictures.

Musical effects in the picture become a big comic at times, as, for instance, when we hear a full symphony orchestra in the heart of the dangerous Kong country, when there should have been nothing but tomtoms. But, from that moment in which the giant ape, with tremendous crashing of trees and unearthly grunts and roars, appears—well, no sane person can complain of lack of entertainment of the breath-taking sort. It is like the ghost stories of your childhood, horrifying and fascinating at the same time. The achievement of acquiring muscular movement in an inanimate figure is almost a superhuman one. "Kong" is animated far more successfully, by the way, than the various pterodactyls and other delirium-tremens type of animal that ornament the' picture, although one prehistoric monster lashes his tail in a most convincing manner.

Despite the fact that all Hollywood is cognisant of the trickery of the motion picture trade, "King Kong" had them ga&ping and mystified. When Hollywood gasps there's a reason. The non-professional audiences will without doubt be thrilled by this fantastic tale, which.takes them far from banks and bootleggers into the realm of sheer horrible imagination and behind the screen of Hollywood's mechanical arts, so long carefully guarded from the public eye.

Ramon Novarro has had two of the best bets of the season bought for him— "Laughing Boy," the Indian story for which Carl Laemmle, jun., Universal, was unable to find a lead, failing to borrow Novarro from Metro, and which he finally sold to Irving Thalberg, since he felt the young Mexican actor was the only one to do it; and now the Kern operetta, "The Cat and the Fiddle," also considered an excellent vehicle for this musical star.

"Rome wasn't built in a day," the saying goes, but Hollywood refutes it. Rome was built and destroyed by fire the same day for spectacular scenes in "The Sign of the Cross." To present realistically the historical burning of the Eternal City by Nero, an exact replica of the heart of the ancient capital was constructed at the studio ranch. Scores of carpenters, labourers and technicians, working in shifts, completed the task in 23 hours. While Charles Laughton, as Nero, strummed his lyre, dozens of cameras recorded the conflagration, the mammoth "set" being reduced to ashes in another hour.

unusual brilliance. Elissa Landi has been described "as rising to new and unexpected heights of emotional acting as the Christian. Mercia, and Fredric March has a brilliant part as the favourite of Nero's court, Marcus Superbus, whose love for the Christian girl proves stronger than tradition, wealth, position, or even life.

In the secondary roles are lan Keith as a sinister villain, captain of Nero's guard; Vivian Tobin, charming in her first screen role as a gossipy Roman matron; Ferdinand Gottschalk bringing his fine talent to the role of a philosopher; Tommy Conlon as a Christian boy; and the dancer Joyzelle, as a courtesan, Ancaria.

It is hoped that Cecil Blount de Mille has justified the reviewers' acclamation that he-"has turned out a memorable successor to "The Ten Commandments" and "King of Kings."