Film Babies

Evening Post, Volume CXI, Issue 100, 30 April 1931, Page 18

Film Babies

What is a film baby? Miss Edna Best, whose brief sojourn in Hollywood ended abruptly with her flight to New York to rejoin her husband, answers the question. "I found there a race of men and women vho are born film babies," she told the "Daily Mail's" New York correspondent, "a strange creation of Hollywood that in part explains the extraordinary success achieved throughout the world by the film colony. Here are people who think films because they have never known anything else. They are picture folk born with the. film point of view. "This accounts for their skilful technique, which in itself is sufficient to give them the foremost place in the industry. One of the most frequent remarks I heard while at the Metro-Goldwyn studio was: 'Mark my words, in five years' time the talkies will be a great industry .in England, but we shall manage them.' "Still the industry has .its worries, some of them, in my opinion, greater than those .which confront English film-makers' Both, I ,find, suffer from, poverty of material. . Apparently a' fortune awaits anyone with the gift-of writing acceptable scenarios, for both Elstree 'and Hollywood lack them. "Despite the success of. Chaplin's new silent film, I am convinced that the talkies are developing a much more refined' and subtle art than was possible in the 0,1(1 days. Inexperience still hangs over them, but with a few more years the art' of-the. talkies, will be as fully developed as that of " t the legitimate stage."