OLD-TIMERS.

Auckland Star, Volume LXX, Issue 20, 25 January 1939, Page 6

OLD-TIMERS.

STUDIOS HAUNTED. "THEY NEVER COME BACK.' ONLY FEW HAVE STEADY JOBS (By HAROLD HEFFERXAX.) HOLLYWOOD. Dei-ember 30. "They never come back." This a|>homm was coined by the world of sport as an epitaph for its fallen champions, but it applies with equal potency to the world of the screen. I Scores of men and women whose names but a decade ago were household I words now haunt the Hollywood studios in a dreary search for work as I extra* or as players of the merest bits, their positions but little better than those of slap-happy fighters who hang about gymnasiums where the champions I of to-day are at work. There are occasional exceptions to the rule in both worlds. Joe Louis was beaten down and came back to win the world's heavyweight boxing championship. A scattered few oid-timers of the films have also fought back to steady work —but, by and large, they hover in the shadow of oblivion. Hardly a week passes without the Los Angeles Press announcing an attempted comeback of one old-timer or another, but usually these stories can be traced to the publicity departments of studios seeking to cash in on the still intriguing names of personalities who bowled over box offices in the heyday of the eilents. Clara Kimball Yeans TriM Again. Clara Kimball Young, once the premier siren of the celluloids, is essaying her third return—through a role in "Frontiersman," latest of the popular Hopalong Cassidy series of westerns. She's confident the public will welcome her and that she will be able to regain some semblance of her old rating — not

as.a romantic lead, of course, but as a character actress. Harry Sherman, who produces the Hopalong Caaeidys, has promised her a stronger role in bis next film. Grown buxom over the years, Miss Young is still an attractive woman. "I'm back in pictures because I etill want to be a part of the industry," she said. "Nobody should retire so long as j they are able to work. One should ease ' up a bit, but no one that has been a real trouper can quit and long survive." That Miss Young should suffer when separated from the Hollywood atmosphere is not surprising. Both her father and mother were professionals, and ah* was born into the theatre. She mads her first stage appearance at three months when she was carried out before the footlights as a prop baby. Her cradle was ths tray of a trunk and her nursery a thousand different' dressing rooms. She played-her first part at the age of two, continuing on the stage until she was nine years old. Then she was seat to school for ths first time. Her picture career began hi 1912—when she was 21 years old. Rising rapidly to. stardom for the old Vitagraph Company, she scored her greatest triumph "My Official Wife," a picture that lingers in her memory as the favourite of them all—and there were close to 25. Ghosts ef the Past Stroll down.Hollywood thoroughfares or pause in front of studio gates where extra and bit players are hired and you'll ase plenty of these tragic ghosts of the past. Faces are faintly familiar. But the hair is grey, or gone altogether. Shoulders.stoop. And too many look sick and hungry. investigate, further and you'll find names of a dozen or more ex-glamour gfrls and boys on the books of the Motion Picture Belief Fund for regular disbursements. Many more are on State relief. Studios have absorbed a large number of the old-timers, giving the more ambitions a: chance to do odd jobs SSyiA fcrtß ' * onrpenter or an 2$ jot*} "nun on the set looks up suddenly and gives you a shock. A man who makes artificial, flowers and £ins them on prop trees at one studio ' •• the romantic heartthrobber who rose to overnight fame in one of 1916's biggest productions. Among the scores fighting courageously to eke out a livelihood from an industry that once paid them fabulous salaries are Francis X. Bushman, Maurice Costello, Stuart Holmes, Baby Mane Osborne, Flora Finch and Mies louag, shown in, the. accompanying PhOtcyaphs as they appeared at the height of their popularity— and as the camera 'caught them in recent .weeks. Bushman played small parts for eeveral years following his decline, later M 'S£*Bfeb*agms* mm Angeies, Mgfcmw is n%rj«o entertainer!" As Beverley Bayne's hero in "Graustark" end many otherbreath-taking lore tales of twenty-five years ago, he succeeded COstello, who really pioneered the leading man business and elevated it to a high wage standard, Bushman was routed from his romantic throne when his wife instituted a divorce suit against him, revealing he was the father . of several children. Ths fans didn't like that. , ■/ -i ~&' Sixty-one-year-old Costello, headline lover of thirty years ago under the Vitagraph banner, sits in his small Holly- ' wood apartment and waits for casting ; bureau calls that net him occasional odd jobs in pictured. He ruminates bitterly on his »te. He, points across the street at an Old structure that once housed .*£. N » tioß *i Pictures, an outgrowth of Vitagraph. "To think I have to sit

here broke and look_put at a studio bought with the earnings from my pictures!" he says bitterly. Stuart Holmes, whose sleek, mous-tache-twisting villainies — with Theda Bara the routine victim—agitated the customers to a fever heat, is on the payroll at Warner Brothers, and has been for many yeirs. He sometimes plays small parts 11.1 pictures, but you'd never recognise him. He still wears the same style moustache, but his head is barren. Flora Finch, John Bunny's partner and wife, first of the slap-stick queens, now earns a small weekly wage playins atmosphere roles in M.ft.M. pictures." She and Bunny were teamed in fifty-two comedies a year between 1910 and 1915. Baby Marie Osborne—the Baby M*rie comedies were as popular in their time as the "Our Gang" of to-day—is now a beautiful young woman of 25, and has shown considerable talent for acting, but never has she been able to get a part. For steady work. Baby Marie, who now has a five-year-old daughter of her own, acts as stand-in to Ginger Rogers. There are a thousand-and-one real life dramas lurking in the lives of yesterday's film stars. It cost too many of them a million dollars to learn the value of a nickel. —N.A.N.A.