Juvenile Parade

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXV, Issue 23073, 25 June 1938, Page 16 (Supplement)

Juvenile Parade

Outspoken Comment hy English Critic Of Screen Treatment of Children SINCERE PORTRAYALS NOW ATTEMPTED

By GLYN ROBERTS

The outstanding figure in the cinema as an industry has been for years a dimpled fair-haired child who reaches out with her chubby hand and deftly steals the heart of Australia, Albania, Arabia and the Antilles. # , One has to accept the phenomenon of Shirley Temple as a basic fact of the modern world —an infant who, at eight years of age, is already a veteran entertainer and one of the bestloved personalities in the world.

I HAVE not iseen many of Miss Temple's films, but I have 110 particular instinctive detestation for the child—as many of my colleagues have—or, so far as I am aware, any prejudice arising from her fantastic exploitation and fame. There she is, and what else could „ we expect? In point of fact, Shirley looks to me rather a likeable, dir ® cfc little piece, who has retained her natural high spirits and simplicity with a quite extraordinary degree of success considering everything. Never were there so many children of various ages jostling and no doubt secretly pinching and P" nch "5, . other ip vigorously adult * "make successful careers" for them ee ]ves while still considerably below what are. technically known as years of discretion. Aggressive Mickey Rooney Recently we have seen somewhere about a dozen youngsters given the standing, the publicity and the salaries of stars; we'havb been drawn mto a campaign to screen nearly all the most famous stories in all literature of childhood and youth. Before us now, for our approval, are lined up carefully-picked children who. but for this presumably accidental talent, would be scuffling and scrapping and screaming their early lives away in the normal obscurity. There is the litigation-torn Freddie Bartholomew, that too - accomplished and mature young gentleman; his rival r—in a sporting way, of decorous young Apollo who wears girl s collars, Ronny Sinclair; terrific Mickey Rooney, aggression" in person, one or the half-dozen screen personalities who have the power to leap out of the screen, grab you by the throat and uhake you into alarmed admiration. In England there is a curious little child called Binkie Stuart, who has starred in far more British films than you probably thought. Brilliant Young Specialists Hollywood has an amusing wench .With a sly humour, an observant eye and a rubber face, named. Jane Withers, » sort of embryo Gracie Fields or Fannie Brice. Miss .Withers has loads of technique, and is entering into a leggy, awkward stage which does not seem to have diminished her vitality or her very real charm. There arc three extremely competent, often brilliant specialists in the machiavellian Bonita Granville, the convincingly natural Marcia Mae Jones and .the hateful Edith Fellowes. There is England's own Desmond •Tester, a young actor who knows his job and makes no. attempt to. steal scenes or project his personality illicitly. There is Jackie Cooper, once an archpurveyor of glutinous weepery, now gangling and somewhat worried-look-in*r. There is Tommy Kelly, a curly-rheaded Child who seems to have just about eiery thing. Case of a Child Singer. Most of them do not last very long Certainly. Four or five years ago London filmgoers raved over two performances given by a fair-haired French boy, Robert Lynen. Then Lynen disappeared. Six months ago he cropped up again in a small part in the French film "Un Carnet de Bal," he was at least 6ft. high and had changed incredibly. It is taid that when the director, Duvivier, found him he was in financial straits. Child stars mav hear,, too, about the extraordinary case of Master Ernest Lough. Master Lough,, a London choir boy, had a voice which reminded dowagers and spinsters of the place they hoped to go to, and his gramophone records sold by hundreds of thousands. Yet even on attaining his majority he got very little money. We have heard all about the sorrows of Master Coogan, a very disgruntled young gentleman. In spite of the amount of talent obviously available, it is clear that the situation as regards child actors is not yery satisfactory. Sentimental Exploitation The child star, if cold-bloodedly enough exploited, can make millions by playing with deliberate and gruesome pu-posefulness on the emotions of vast undeterminate masses who fill cinemas and show-what they like in the clearest possible way—by going to see it. One may regret the importance in the icinema of these children who aro snatched up and tossed around in this way, but until the public wants something different it will continue to get films in which the whole fabric of the picture is arranged to glorify some blueeyed 1 lisping moppet. As the child moves through its painfully remembered paces, puckering its face to remember what the nice man said it should do next and clumsily Btumbling through a hideous tap-dance culminating in a wobble and a gaptoothed grin, the auditorium rustles .with admiration. The serious treatment of children in films exists in a world quite separate from this- circus. There is the organised industry for the exploitation either

of what some people find ravishing, as in the cases of Shirley Temple or of Bobby Breen, or of a definite talent, as in the case of Jane Withers. So immense in its resources is this industry that nearly all the biggest serious actors in the profession, sooner or later, have to "stoogo" to the child star, as doting parents, crustily lovable gran'paws or swinish kidnappers. Intelligent filmgoers can deplore the sentimental attitude of many people to juvenile film players and thank their stars that a serious and honest treatment of the delightful things children really are is being attempted by more responsible film-makers. In France, children are usually presented on the screen with honesty and genuine understanding and realism. Some years ago Germany produced "Emil and the Detectives," a story which transferred the souls of boys on to celluloid with fidelity and without unnecessary sentiment. Nova Pilbeam in her early films was a real girl, just as Desmond Tester is quite a believable boy, and not an insufferable little pansy with carefullydisarranged curls. Graham Moffatt is as refreshing as a glass of ale after a ten-mile walk on the Sussex downs. The truth about children is that they are rather complex and very terrifying.

Until they are made self-conscious by the interminable interferences and proddings and persecutions of adults, they are serious and secretive. Their directness is at once admirable and frightening. A child will stare .at a visitor with a red nose or a deformity and ask, in a clear ringing voice, the very question all present are dying to ask and dare. not. And the same child will comfort an adult when no adult can. Unlike the coy little things we get on the screen, they are open and unencumbered and simple. They are childlike; only adults are childish. It might be a sound idea to let children make some of our child films.