EUGENE O'NEILL.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIV, Issue 285, 2 December 1933, Page 5 (Supplement)

EUGENE O'NEILL.

HIS FILM "EMPEBOR JONES." DRAMATIST'S CINEMA INTEREST. The sound film of Eugene O'Neill's play, "Emperor Jones," with Paul Robeson in the role of Brutus Jones, the Carolina negro who became a Pullman porter, murdered a companion, and eet himself up as absolute ruler of an island in the West Indies, had its Broadway premiere in September. It took Mr. Dudley Murphy, a film director, eight ygars to "sell the idea" to a producer with enough money to spend upon it.

Eight years ago Murphy wrote a film treatment of the drama, and showed it to Paul Robeson, but that apparently ended the matter. As for Mr. O'Neill, ho seems to be constitutionally and artistically shy of dialogue films. The object of his arrival recently in New York was stated by him in an interview to be to watch rehearsals by the Theatre Guild of his latest play, "Ah, Wilderness,", with George M. Cohan in the cast. It was his intention, however, to see "Emperor Jones" on the screen one day during its Broadway run. "The narrative outline, as I heard it," he said, "seemed to me fine; it was, as a matter of fact, surprisingly similar to a treatment which I made for a proposed but never completed silent film version." He is, frankly, still interested in silent films. Before the talkies came the dramatist wrote his own adaptations for the cinema of "Desire Under the Elms" and "The Hairy Ape." He made the extraordinary confession that he had never seen his play "Strange Interlude" on the screen. Not that he avoided it purposely, like so many of the world's millions. It was simply that the film was not shown in the vicinity of his island off the coast of Georgia, where he and his wife have been living for eighteen months or so. But he read the film script, and he believed the adaptors did a fine job in cutting down its bulk to picture size. . The interviewer in New York of Mr. O'Neill for the "Herald-Tribune" discovered that the dramatist's interest in the cinema was roused when he saw the silent film version of "Anna Christie," which was made many years ago by Marshall Neilan, with Blanche Sweet in the title role. Mr. O'Neill still regards that picture as amazing in the way in which it preserved the drannrtic form of his play. He admires Greta Garbo, but —whisper it out of Hollywood! —he did not go to see her in the sound version of "Anna Christie." He explained: —"I did not want to lose my memory of the earlier work." The interviewer thus sums up: —"For the present it seems unlikely that O'Neill is to emerge as a writer of original screen stories. That might have been a possibility in the days of cinema silence, but right now the photoplay strikes him as being an unexciting medium, and he thinks it just as well for him to leave it alone."

Director William Seiter will handle the production, "Chance at Heaven," with "Ginger" Rogers and Joel McCrea co-starred. The story is an adaptation from Vina Delmar's widely-read novel.

Though he has appeared in more than 50 successful dramatic pictures, Richard Barthelmess has always wanted to make a comedy. t "Central Airport," in which he appears, devotes many moments to humour, but it is essentially a drama. The actor intends to play roles that afford scope for lightness of treatment until he convinces the public that he will be satisfying in a comedy role. Then he will play one.

Neil Hamilton, the famous screen star, who is playing a big part in Gary Cooper's new picture, "One Sunday Afternoon," tried 30 different trades before ho finally entered a studio. They included: —Handy boy in a toy factory, model for collar advertisements, soldier, sailor, mechanic, bookkeeper, advertising canvasser for a newspaper, master of ceremonies for a dance hall and policeman. He started work at the age of 13.