“DRAMA ON TAP”

Evening Star, Issue 23727, 7 November 1940, Page 13

“DRAMA ON TAP”

BULLETS, SCREAMS, AND TEARS I’d like to introduce you to a few of the odd-job men of Hollywood, writes Peggie Holder, in a London paper. Gene Donovan, for instance, supplies the Hollywood studios with the newspaper inserts we see in many films. He operates a small, but modern, shop where he publishes papers in Chinese, Japanese, Turkish, and practically every known language. The shop possesses every kind of printer’s type obtainable, for 500 newspapers—replicas of papers, past and present, published in all parts of the world—are printed there every year. If Jack Frost is wanted on the sot at the Goldwyn Studios, Paul Widlicska calls for two gallons of beer. No, the beer is not for inspiration. He lets it go stale, mixes in some epsora salts and paraffin and boils briskly for several hours. When it is cool it is painted

on the windows to be “ frosted,” and the job is done. Tears are as necessary to pictures as water to a watering can, though players can’t always turn them on at will. But Bill Kissoll, Warner’s property man, is never at a Joss. Using a glass tube containing menthol crystals loosely packed in cotton wool, ho blows a little into the actress’s eyes, and then the cameraman steps in for a quick close-up. .Did you know that the bullet holes that spring up all over the place in “action ” pictures, are first made with a gimlet? They are then filled with a small charge of gunpowder, covered over to match the surrounding surface, and exploded electrically from behind the scene. Ernie Tate makes “ antique ” furniture. His ageing process includes marring the new furniture with a blow lamp, and rubbing various ingredients into the scorched parts to complete the “ antique ” illusion. Then there is Freddie Wells, who is indispensable when the script calls for plenty of dust—old houses, for instance, where dust is half an inch thick on the furniture. Using a pair of bellows of his own design, he blows brown tal-

cum powder on to the shiny surface and so produces “ dust,” But Sarah Schwartz has, perhaps, the strangest job of all. She just yells for a living 1 When the. heroine is beset by the villain, it is usually Sarah who obliges with the screaming.