VANISHED WHISKERS.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIV, Issue 189, 12 August 1933, Page 5 (Supplement)

VANISHED WHISKERS.

THE POLISHED COWBOY.

HOLLYWOOD'S "REVOLUTION."

Tlie market price on whiskers in Hollywood has practically dropped out of si°-ht. Time was when a first-rate set of whiskers was just as good ae a meal ticket, especially when Alaskan and Californian mining camp operas were the big urge in films. To-day they're using them to stuff mattresses. The order has gone out from one big Hollywood studio that in all Western pictures made there, bewhiskered types are not to be used unless absolutely necessary in the plot of the story. As a result, hands that haven't held a razor since Admiral Dewey sailed into Manila Bay are endangering their owners' lives daily. „ , George O'Brien, the "Western' hero, who is nearly as famous as the man whose stories he brings to life on the screen —Zane Grey—is credited generally with having brought about the great change. George has taken the "movie" cowboy out of the saloon, staked him to a shave, haircut, bath, clean clothes and understandable English. George left a pre-inedical course at Santa Clara University to enter motion pictures, and lie never could understand why screen cowboys should differ from other athletically-inclined young Americans. Apparently George had the right idea. His pictures have prospered where those of other "cow opera" heroes have failed. He has proved that you can play "Western" heroes and speak plain English at the same time. Still in as good condition as when he became light-heavy-weight navy ring champion, he does not drink or smoke, off the screen or on. He isn't bow-legged, and he has never acquired the fictionally famous "rolling" cowboy gait. He wears a dinner suit in some part of nearly every one of hifi "Western" pictures. In silent picture days, whisker-wearing frontiersmen could fill in the lulls of "Western" production by playing roles of grand dukes and counts and such in highbrow society dramas having a European background. But nowadays there are so many real dukes and the like -Tabbing this work that a poor cowboy is just out of luck. Besides, their

accents are like pieces from a different jigsaw puzzle; they just don't fit the microphone. Casting directors are rapidly adjusting themselves to the flock of new faces that liavo come out of hiding, and the boys are doing better in a financial way during the whisker suppression.

The game of "beaver," once a popular pastime along Hollywood boulevard, is just a memory. Pardner Jones, who lias been growing beards for the last 40 years, almost died of pneumonia the first week lie went bare-faced. Bill Wolf, from Texas, still blushes when he looks into a mirror and sees his uncovered cheeks. However, the barbers aren't complaining.