Trickery In Hollywood

Northern Advocate, 14 January 1939, Page 14

Trickery In Hollywood

It is doubtful if even the inveterate and all-observant film follower can tell half the time what is genuine and what is sham in the motion picture he is seeing. r ' • % / x. This is not to say that he is misled by a hurricane scene or a submarine sinking sequence. The film-makers are not Unwilling to confess that they obtain such effects in miniature —and no' one is the less impressed or stirred fori knowing that all are hot exactly What they appear to be. But there still is considerable deception and ■ trickery practised in the making of a picture, for one reason or another, and sometimes even the actors are fooled. The actors, for instance, were the victims of a base hit of chicanery, to their great chagrin; in the making of a scene of “Hollywood Hotel,” Warner Bros.’ filmusical employing Dick Powell, Bertny Goodman and his band.

The scene was one of those casinolike settings that Hollywood devises when it is in its most expensive mood, a room for several hundred extras to play at being playful. Wine botttes were everywhere, two hundred of them, champagne bottles tilting rakishly in silver buckets brimming with sparkling cubes.

Ask almost any spectator about that champagne display and he would dismiss it as sham without hesitation. As a matter of fact, the performers engaged in the scene dismissed the exhibit without a second guess and went seriously and solemnly about their business of being playful.

But the champagne, for some whim or reason of the property man, was real. No players suspected it, and it survived rehearsal, take and re-take unscathed. It was the ice - in the buckets, not the wine, that was imitation. Ice melts, so cellophane cubes were used. Cellophane reflects»light better, anyhow.

That same scene was strewn with orchids. Real orchids failed to pass a screen test. They pined away under the powerful lights. like a pre-war heroine. So artificial blossoms were made with silk. The imitations, incidentally, cost mere than the genuine article. On the other hand, pond lilies pictured in another sequence are real. It was found by test that the real flower photographed better than the synthetic. Minor items, like silver services, that easily could be bought or borrowed, are likely % to be imitations. But two giant candelabra, that decorate the “Holly Wood Hotel” ballroom scene and, you would think, easily could be put together in one of the studio workshops, happen to be valuable antiques. They were made in the time of Louis XIV. for a French chateau. Jack L. Warner picked them up—lf you pick up anything for £9OO0 —in an antique shop in Paris more than a year before there was any talk about making a picture called “Hollywood Hotel.”

The kitchen setting is likely.to be a false-front, but if the script calls for an order of hot coffee, hot coffee will be the order that comes up. Rosemary Lane can convince any doubter about that. When she tipped a tray by accident in 'one scene she was miking, the coffee that hit her ankle was not sham. It was scalding. «•