MAKING OF COMEDIES.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVII, Issue 20626, 26 July 1930, Page 11 (Supplement)

MAKING OF COMEDIES.

TEARS AND LAUGHTER

" When you're seeking success in comedy, seek writers and players who cry easily, but to whom laughs come as if you were pulling teeth," said Mr. C. Reisner, a successful maker of scores of comedies, recently in tho course of an interview. Mr. Reisner said the socalled " funny men " who smiled all over were suitable for individual jokes, but when it was a matter of continuing laughs through a live-reel picture, what was needed was the man who liked to read Ibsen just before going to bed. " It has been said many times that a tear is very close to a laugh and it's very true." added Mr. Reisner. "If I told you the story of Charlie Chaplin's 'Hie Kid,' you'd call it the greatest tragedy you e\er heard. And tho greatest laugh 1 have in the new Mario Dressier-Polly Moran picture, " Caught Short," could have been a great sob, by just another twist. Marie, who had quarrelled with Polly, sees through tho window that Polly's furniture is being thrown into the street-. Fearing tho worst she rushes over, takes Polly into her own home, and promises her a place for the. rest of her life. The comedy comes because Marie talks so fast, Polly cannot explain she has made a fortune on the stock market. But, continued as tragedy, it would have been equally as effective in that field. Tho reason why comedy writers must know tho depths of tr&gedy is that comedy is the emotion at the oilier extreme, and much tho same fundamental reasons that causo spirits to soar, also creates their decline."