Glamour Defined

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXVI, Issue 23381, 24 June 1939, Page 18 (Supplement)

Glamour Defined

An authority on the ballet, Mr. Arnold L. Haskell, gave his views on glamour at a meeting of the Royal Society of Arts. There was, lie said., more snobbery and sloppy thinking about the word than over anything else. He defined glamour in its theatrical sense as the emotion conveyed by the circumstances of a performance rather than by its intrinsic merit of the performance itself. The film stars had glamour for millions because of publicity, and publicity was a very strong ingredient of glamour. "If Mile. Gustafsson walked through the room no one would look twice," he said. " If it were Greta Garbo, there would be a riot. Glamour is clearly something external, since an incognito can kill it stone-dead." Mr. Haskell said that he had not the slightest, doubt that within half a century people would talk of English ballet as they talked of Russian ballet to-day.