FILM “TYPES.”

Manawatu Standard, Volume L, Issue 142, 15 May 1930, Page 11

FILM “TYPES.”

GIRL WHO SEARCHES FOR THEM. WORKLESS THRONG HER OFFICE. (From the Melbourne Herald’s Woman Writer in London.) Meet Connie —a slim, blue-eyed, fairhaired slip of a girl whose final word, nevertheless, means the difference between starvation and plenty to thousands of London men and women; and whose brains and judgment are relied upon by the heads’of all the big British film companies. Connie’s lather was an Australian, and she herself just missed being bom in Sydney. “Leave it to Connie!” has become a slogan in the film studios. Whether it is an jSungarian band that is needed, “doubles” for all the famous people who took part in - 'the Crimean War, a completely toothless man, a live cobra, or a brace of negro eunuchs, i Connie may safely be depended upon to supply them. It is her proud boast that during the nine months that she has been in business as general “supply merchant” to British film studios, she has never once failed them. CROWD OF APPLICANTS. I mounted to her office in Regent Street through a throng gf applicants for film york that would have been large enough for a whole “crowd” scene of the storming of the Bastille. Downstairs there was a notice on the lift-well: “Artistes with business at Connie’s Ltd. are requested not to stand around the lift and on the landings.” So they stood on the stairs, dozens of them, and overflowed into Connie’s own suite of offices. The waiting-room she had provided for them was crowded, too. ~ . At the end was a door with a wraisthigh wooden barrier, over which actors and. actresses slightly down-at-

heel, but making ever such a brave show to appear prosperous, gazed anxiously, hoping against hope that their names would be called. ... There is no more pathetic eight than an actor or actress on the bor-der-line between youth and age, desperately seeking work. Their talk is airy and their badinage brave and cheerful, but their seeking, hunted eyes betray the pitiful- sham and the real need that is behind it all. “HAVE TO APPEAR CALLOUS.” A score of them pressed forward and gazed at me with what I felt was envious hatred when I passed, apparently without effort, into the inner sanctum where magic contracts are signed and names are made. As I followed Connie’s slim figure, an old, broken-down actor with bleary eyes evidently found it too much, for he stepped forward and waylaid her, asking if she would see him that day. _ At first Connie’s extremely brief and brusque “No!” seemed unnecessarily harsh, but she explained to me afterwards that once she gave wgy

and listened to the “sob stories” of would-be film actors she would find her whole day wasted and no work done at all. “Much as I sympathise with them in my heart of hearts, I have to appear callous at times,” she said. “Some of them come six and eight times a day, and 6ome stay all day long. That is why I have provided central heating and comfortable chairs in my waiting-room. The poor things have nowhere else to go.” Many among this army of unemployed film supers were earning a minimum of £5 a week in crowd scenes at the film studios before talkies became the vogue. Now thousands of them are thrown out of work, fqr crowd scenes are hardly used at all in talkie work. The demand is all for stage stars and for “types.” FINDING “DOUBLES.” Connie —whose full name is Miss Constance Spark—has some extraordinary demands for “types,” and has all her resourcefulness tested in carrying out some of the strange orders. Recently the director of “Greek Street,” a picture of modern Soho now being made, required a dozen masculine young women and a dozen effeminate young men for a burlesque scene. The masculine young women were found easily enough—but for the effeminate young men Connie had to 'ransack some of the cafes of Soho itself. where eventually 6lie found what she wanted. Another rocent order w;,as for a completely bald-headed woman. Connie has found doubles for such famous soldiers in the Crimean campaign of iast century as Lord Lucan, Sir Colin Campbell, Lord Cardigan and Lord Raglan; for Chamberlain, Kruger and Lord Roberts, and for many characters from Dickens. “Finding doubles is one of the, most important branches of my work, she said. “Supposing an actor falls ill while a film is being made. A man exactly like him (and one who can act) must be found to take his place, so that the film can go on. “For that v reason I have to take ‘mental photographs’ and retain them in my memory of about 7000 peopleactor? and actresses on our books among whom there may be a substitnte ** STUNT AVIATOR WANTED. At the moment there was a practical illustration of what occurs, ihe telephone bell rang, and an agitated voice informed Connie that Mr , now playing in an film at Elstree, had been stricken with appendicitis. Could she i Would g P “There’s my next job,” said Connie cheerfully. Before she bowed me out ot ner sanctum and set to work on this new problem, 1 elicited a few further facts about this remarkable young woman. She left school when 144, pasted the Civil Service examination and became a shorthand typist at the War Office. A job as receptionist at a film company’s studios at Kew followed, and then she became confidential secretary to Mr Sidney Jay, a post she retained for nine years and only relinquished last year to strike out on her own account. Oh, and I forgot to mention that she is looking for an amateur aviator willing to suppiy his own machine for stunt purposes, including crashing it; a woman who will fling herself down a flight of stairs; and two men to stage a fight on the top deck of a lm e r at Tilbury in the dead of night. I his includes a 56ft. fall into the water!