STARS AND THEIR KISSES

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XXVI, Issue 79, 14 March 1936, Page 9

STARS AND THEIR KISSES

Loud Ones and Silent MICROPHONE TECHNIQUE J —— , On the supporting post of the micro phone boom which Dick Williams, stu- . dio sound expert, operates, is a small . slip of paper on which are listed th 4 I names of all important Warner Bros. players and the approximate distances : the microphone must be kept away from them during the kissing sequences. The list has been assembled out of (he young man’s own experiences. He has it down so perfectly that it is almost never necessary for the director of a picture on which he works to order a retake of a kissing scene because the “sound” is,bad. After Jimmy Cagney's name is writ, ten the word, “close.” Cagney, explains Williams, is an almost silent, kisser, and the sound track is in no danger during his love scenes. Diek Powell is a shy and hesitant kisser. “Like a school boy,” explain o Williams. Microphone six inches away Pat O’Brien, who gets cheated out of most of his screen kisses by the scenario writers, is also an energetic kisser when ho does kiss, and the mike must be five feet off. George Brent kisses in an extraordinarily loud fashion, so far as Williams's list is concerned. “He starts quietly enough,” says the sound man, “but it grows. I keep the mike two feet away to begin with and then pull it back quickly, during the kiss, to five or six feet.” This is exactly the opposite procedure to that used by the boom man in Dick Powell’s love scenes. He starts back a foot or two with Dick and then shoves the mike in as close to the actor’s chin as he can get it.

Warren William and Ricardo Cortez are quiet lovers, and their rather infrequent kisses are recorded without difficulty. Ross Alexander rates as an “on and offer” who must be watched according to his mood, and Frank McHugh is a “smacker” and the wise boom man swings his microphone far out of the scene when he goes into h huddle with his leading lady. George Arliss used to be listed by Williams as a “smacker,” too, but he has gone back to England, and his screen kisses, which are few and far between at best, are worrying English sound specialists, not Dick Williams.

Errol Flynn, young Irish actor who is playing his first featured role as “Captain Blood,” has never previously kissed or been kissed in an Americanmade picture, so Williams has no way of judging the sound effects he produces when he makes screen love. But, as might be expected, Joe E. Brown, when he does kiss a lady, which isn’t often in his films, does it so wholeheartedly that Williams just shuts off his microphone entirely and depends upon the sound effects department to supply the necessary noise from its “library.”