AN UGLY RACE

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXI, 9 November 1927, Page 5

AN UGLY RACE

FILM EDITOR ON AUSTRALIANS EVIDENCE BEFORE COSIMISSION (By Electrio Telegraph—Copyright) (Australian & N.Z. Cable Association). (Received 9th Nov., 9.40 a.m.) SYDNEY, This Day. Giving evidence before the Film Com-' mission, Robert Dexter, film editor and writer, said that beauty was the merchandise of the motion picture, and AustralV was jprar.tiicaU-y barren of beauty. Nature had made a wonderful job of this continent, “but as human beings we were an ugly race.” He declared there were quite a number of people in Sydney who could make a comfortable living in Hollywood if they would only look natural. Referring to types seen in the Sydney streets, he had seen only one. man whom the rest of tlie world would accept as worth looking at on the screen in a leading role, and he was a newspaper reporter. For screen purposes the features of Australian people were all wrong; and careless dress was another handicap. The best dressed man in Sydney to-day could not hold his own with a five dollar extra man at Hollywood. During the past year there had -been possibly eight girls in Australia who might have developed as acceptable to screen players. Their teeth were naturally poor, and they lacked much in that perfect physical development required for the screen. In the matter of fashion Sydney women were twelve months behind New York styles. Australia was passing through a phase of industrial development, and until that was complete she had neither time nor#money: to spare for the cultivation of the arte, for the motion picture was an art, not an industry. He denied that the United States had taken advantage of the war to oust England from the Australian film market, , and added that if America dropped out of the Australian business to-day . there would be sufficient pictures in England to supply Australia’s requirements for «one and a half weeks only.