"PINT-SIZE" ACTORS.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVIII, Issue 7, 9 January 1937, Page 5 (Supplement)

"PINT-SIZE" ACTORS.

CHILD STARS' «DOUBLES." HOLLYWOOD'S LITTLE MEN. Hollywood boasts of many strange institutions, but surely none stranger than the "Society of Little Men," a group of tiny people who make a living by "doubling" for child stars. Members are not small enough to join a midget act, not large enough to be taken seriously in ordinary commercial or professional life. "But," says Henry Stone who, at 36 years of age, stands 4ft lOin and weighs 6st 61b, "Hollywood has provided a haven for us pint-size gentlemen.

"You see, child stars and feature players must have 'doubles' and "stuntmen' when they are called upon to do something dangerous. That's where we come in. Then, too, there is a law which prohibits children from working after 10 o'clock at night. So when a studio finds it necessary to 'shoot' late at night we come in again."

It was a combination of these circumstances that gave Stone and his fellows their latest assignment with Merle Oberon in Samuel Goldwyn's "Beloved Enemy." The script demanded that a number of children must fall from a fence.

"Growing," Stone points out, "is the great handicap. Only it's npt our growing, it's the growth of the youngsters we 'double' for. I 'stunted' for Jackie Cooper in many of his pictures. In the past six months Jackie has grown so much he'd make two of me. So that's the end of that."

Occasionally Stone and his fellows can double for grown feminine players. He claims to have done some of his beet work a« Janet G«ynor and Rochellc Hudson—but in "long shots," of course