“THE FIRST LADY OF THE SCREEN”

Dominion, Volume 28, Issue 185, 4 May 1935, Page 24

“THE FIRST LADY OF THE SCREEN”

And Helen Hayes

(By

John Storm.)

First lady of the screen is a courtesy title that we may all confer where we will. Having seen Elizabeth .Bergner once on the screen, I would be impelled to >ay the title with my homage at her feet, but the great actress, thougn she has honoured the screen onee, and may again is not yet among film celebrities because she is too completely mistress of the art of the stage. » An Australian film writer gives the title to Madeleine Carroll, whose charm lies in her complete sense of repose. She has beauty of face and voice, too, but there are others more animated that might he put on before her. Many critics wornd give the title to the famous Swedish player, and there are as many whose first idea of the first lady would be the beautiful Nonna Shearer. Since her understanding and touching portrayal of Elizabeth Browning in “The Barretts of Wimpole Street,” she must certainly be placed among the rare few. Then there are some people who have been so carried away by the simplicity, the utter naturalness, and the tender thoughtfulness of the baby star Shirley Temple, that they would give her the title as being the first little girl on the screen to be praised by everyone. When one is at a Shirley show one never hears “She should be at home in bed.’ As soon as she appears we just hear a few delighted chortles and then we find the most hardened disciplinarians that we know breaking away from all desire to put others in their place. Diana Wynyard is fast becoming the most popular screen actress in Englund, and she grows in grace with every picture.

The fascinating Yvonne Arnaud, from the Aldwych Theatre, full of Gallic wit and charm, creates a great deal of happiness and is certainly a finished artist. And Margaret Sullavan would when a little older do for first lady anywhere. To see her .in “The Good Fairy” was to realise heY powers of comedy as well as of drama. No wonder she is called the find of the screen.

But there is one little lady—said to . be the smallest in stature on the screen— Who has made me wish to forgive my enemies and live at peace with all the world. It is Helen .Hayes. She was playing Maggie Wylie in the play that is unpopular with most men because in it J. M. Barrie suggests that it is always a woman that makes a man’s career successful. In “What Every Woman Knows” there is a.Scots lass from a remote village and a lass who in her own words lacks “cliarrrm,” Helen Haj’es wns this one, and she had to manage not only a family of “thrawn” brothers ami a father, but she had to take on the management of John- Shand, the intelligent porter and head him for Westminster. Those who remembered her dramatic presentation of Madelon in the sorrowful psychological study of “The Sin of Madelon Claudet” would not recognise this piece of Scots thistledown. Helen threw herself into the part with the same.abandon and soon had all hearts in a simmer of joy in a vortex of Scots humour and the voice to the life. The fascinating opera singer Grace Moore is, to St. John Irvine, the only woman, rather than the first lady, of the screenHe is alleged to have owned himself won over to its possibilities by her performance in the now world-famous picture, “One Night of Love.”