POSSIBLE STARS

Southland Times, Issue 23287, 25 August 1937, Page 9

POSSIBLE STARS

SEARCH FOR TALENT IN ENGLAND USE OF THEATRE VOTES There has been so much talk and so little action by film producers both visitors and natives, about the discovery of unknown stars in the teashops and byways and repertory companies of England, that it comes as something of a shock to learn that somebody is really doing something at last towards discovering one, writes the film correspondent of The Observer. Alexander Korda and Oscar Deutsch, chairman of Odeon Theatres, have hit on a plan by which they hope to introduce a number of new and untried players to the public, and leave the public themselves to indicate the stars. The plan is to produce, at Mr Korda’s studios at Denham, a number of short pictures, in each of which three, or perhaps four, newcomers will sing, dance, do a bit of “straight” acting and altogether give a sample of their quality. The pictures will be shown regularly in the programmes of Mr Deutsch’s two 'hundred and fifty theatres, . and every member of the audience will be given a voting card on which to register approval or disapproval. The vote will—or shall we say, may—decide the qualification of these candidates for star rank. The plan, which seems to me an excellent one, mutually advantageous to producers, exhibitors, actors, and picturegoers, arose in a curiously accidental way in the course of the normal studio curriculum. Mr Korda and his associate producers at Denham, finding themselves faced at the beginning of this year with a large number of pictures requiring large casts of players, set about a widespread roundup of talent Maxwell Wraye, the theatre producer, who was already working as dialogue director on Korda’s “Knight Without Armour,” was commissioned to hunt for new faces, faces that would stand out in the small parts—individual faces that would make us say, as we do of the players in Hollywood pictures, “Who was the girl who played the typist?” “What was die name of that gangster fellow?” and, “Why can’t they give us cast lists at the end of the film?” VARIED TYPES Maxwell Wraye sent out his scouts into the worlds of the professional and amateur theatre, rang up the agents, let it be known among his theatre friends what he was doing. The results were overwhelming. At his first audition they came in by their hundreds, from the Westend Theatre, from the repertory companies, from the music hall, from the dance bands. There were amateurs who had never spoken a line on any stage, and veterans who had been playing B towns for thirty years. There were elderly ladies who periodically oiled the throat with a drop of port from a medicine bottle, and pathetic little girls who had risked seven and sixpence on a dancing lesson for the great occasion. They were opera singers and low comedians; eccentric dancers and society maidens; Poles and Swedes and Canadians, Viennese and Americans and Cockneys. From these hundreds Mr Wraye weeded out the most promising twenty or thirty, talked to them, rehearsed them, tried to discover their individual bent, and made various tests of them. Then he called another audition, weeded out another twenty and so on, again and again. From these tests some of the small parts have already been cast in coming Denham productions. But a number of interesting candidates are still unplaced. Mr Wraye was doubtful and the studio was sure. Or Mr Wraye was sure and the studio was doubtful. Or simply there was no part for them in the current schedule. These are the tests that the public will judge in the Odeon Theatres. Some may prove to have what is known as star personality. Some may do well as small-part character players. Some may get the bird with just and forthright unanimity. Anyway, its up to us. Having seen between twenty and thirty of Mr Wraye’s seeded tests, I can promise something really interesting to any picturegoer who joins in this curious canvass. There are at least three potential stars in the batch, and quite a dozen others with enormous possibilities. There is a crooner, a personable young man, not unknown in this country, who might well turn out to be, for better or worse, a second Bing Crosby. There is an old, large musichall star with a lovely gusto who would knock them flat in Walthamstow or Mayfair. There is a fey girl, with flying eyes, who doesn’t yet know her medium, who might be the world’s best Mary Rose, and yet again she mightn’t. There is the sister (though you will never know it) of a well-known film star, who has been overlooked, quite mistakenly I fancy, in favour of brighter looks and clearer charm and more obvious talents. There is a grand Cockney lad who does skat-singing, and the budding sprig of a theatrical royal family. There is a wistful soubrette with the lost look of a ZaSu Pitts, whom I should sign up quick if I were a producer, and a young Canadian girl who has never spoken a line on any stage, who plays, quite touchingly, a scene from “The Constant Nymph” in monologue. And there is a young Polish dancer with exquisite limbs, a broad, urgent little face, and a voice like liquid honey. Nobody can persuade me that somewhere here, amongst all this talent, you will not find the bright stuff of which stars can be made.