COLMAN SPEAKS.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVIII, Issue 156, 3 July 1937, Page 5 (Supplement)

COLMAN SPEAKS.

ON HIS OWN CAREER. STARS SHOULD FREE-LANCE, i retire after two failures. Ronald Colman declares that he will retire from the screen after he has made two consecutive failures. The star, who refuses to sign a Ion"- t term contract with any studio, thinks that every top-class actor in Hollywood ' should free-lance as he and Fredric March and John Boles do. < "Most of the actors lack the courage 1 to cut themselves adrift from a lon— term contract," Ronald Colman said; they are afraid tliev will not get work. All I know is that March and I could each make ten pictures a year if we wanted to. We can choose our stories and appear only in those we like. I ain now trying to persuade William Powell to free-lance. Powell is in a position to pick and choose his material, and he is ill-advised to continue making five talkies a year. It is just as bad to make Ave films a year as it is to make one picture every five years, like Chaplin. The popularity of the star suffers in either case. The public either gets tired of the actor or forgets him." No More Fortunes. Colman's average output is three pictures, every two years. "Because of the heavy income tax it hardly pays to make two films a year, and you lose money on three," he said. "\ou re just as well off practically with one film, and you save your strength. "I here are no more fortunes to be made in Hollywood. It was only possible in the good old days prior to income tax, when Douglas Fairbanks was leaping to the rescue of ladies in distress and Mary Pickford had long curls and was the sweetheart of America. If I had been a star then I would be a millionaire by now." Colman receives £40,000 a picture. He landed in New York in 1920 with £11 4/ in his pocket. The star is currently appearing as Rudolph in David Selznick's version of "The Prisoner of Zenda," a costume film with a Ruritanian background. He savs his next will be a modern comedy. Colman believes that any picture can be successful if it involves a £200,000 expenditure, has a good story, a directorproducer of the calibre of David Selznick or Sa.muel Goldwyn. "These producers make only a few pictures a year," he said. "The money they spend, the time and the care they give to detail make a failure impossible." After remarking that he would retire from the screen after two consecutive film failures, Colman said he did not anticipate that his retirement would be soon. '"The public has stood for me for a long time, and it will probably put up with me for a little while to come." Inauspicious Beginning. Born in Surrey, England, 46 years ago, Colman carried a few letters of introduction besides his £11 4/ when he first went to New York In two years he worked only in "The Dauntless Three," a short-lived play, and in "The Green Goddess," in which George Arliss was starred. His first important picture role was "The White Sister," with Lilian Gish, which was followed by "Romola," "The Dark Angel," "Stella- Dallas," "Beau Geste" and a do/.en others. He has survived most of his early Hollywood contemporaries and knew Garbo when she was posing for bathing "stills." ' r He was not a naturalised American—and will not be. The actor thinks that "a British passport is still the best in ■ the world." He would like to make a • picture in London, but only one. "HollyL wood has the best of everything for s film-making," he says, "and there's such - a thing as,staying in England too long."