Feminine Interests

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 615, 18 March 1929, Page 5

Feminine Interests

Strong Men s Tears

If you have handkerchiefs, prepare to use them now. , Strong men’s tears have lately ; flowed in important quarters. Naked 1 and unashamed tears. Tears weakly shel in the full view of tellow-men who i carry prepaid cable-forms addressed ; to newspapers in their pockets. Down Under, a week or so ago, a i young cricketer sat in a corner of a j railway carriage crying his heart out. j This temporary martyr to muscular j rheumatism had just been scratched j from the Test matches. And did that little incident, so carefully recorded ou those prepaid cable- j forms, thereupon hit us all for six? \ Did we, Up Over, ask ouselves J what the world was coming to when ! able-bodied gentlemen could weep in : public places? We did not. And lam willing to | gamble long odds that that newspaper j paragraph was responsible for many ; a reciprocal tear. “Poor fellow!” cried out cricket ! fans, blowing their noses violently as one man, “very tough luck.”

Well, it was tough luck, but (and may I be forgiven for suggesting such a thing?) was it worth crying about? Let us suppose our best friend has been in the running for political honours, and lost his chance by a mere hair’s breadth. Would political fans the world over have mopped up a similar sympathetic and communal tear? Not likely. And for the very simple reason that the political candidate himself would not have howled about it. At least, not in a lachrymose fashion. There is recent historical precedent for this statement. When Governor A 1 Smith was defeated at the U.S. Presidential polls, all the emotional outburst he was credited with was the remark, "To hell with politics. I’m through.” Imagine the scandal that would have followed if a cricketer, walking into the dressing-room, had said, “Boys, my knee has gone again. To hell with cricket. I’m through.” They would have pinched him there and then for lfese majeste. Instead, he broke the grievous news thus; “Boys, I have bowled my last ball against you, and I am probably finished for ever in cricket.” And left the dressing-room with tears in his eyes. Ah, well. In these more vital and, of course, sacrosanct worlds of sport men will be women. A champion boxer has been known to retire to his dressing-room after all the stuffing has been punched out of him and weep himself into a state of violent sickness. And have you been to the pictures lately? There’s “Sorrell and Son.’ Ninety minutes of sob stuff. “East Lynne,” perhaps the classic example of a local squalls producer, ! has nothing on this, at times, excessively crude and comic screen version of one of the most beautiful and moving books ever written. In the Victorian story it is the spectacle of a poor, weak woman shedding weak tears over the death-bed of her Little Willie that switches the barometer of every picture-house or theatre showing it to Very Wet.

But in "Sorrell and Son" we have . something really worth crying about. | Strong men’s tears. Sorrell weeps. His beloved buy weeps. We all weep. ( There isn’t a handkerchief that goes ' into the cinema featuring that release | that doesn’t go out a sodden ball of j imprisoned tears. J And, just as recently, “The Tern- | pest,” with little John Barrymore I stalking across the silver sheet, cunningly metamorphosed by tlie cameraman’s art into a Gft Sin giant, j He, too, treats us to many a closej up of his pretty eyes full of unshed | tears It was raining outside the"afternoon | I saw that film, but it was nothing to j the rainfall inside i And here let me present the public.

j with a truth they probably but dimly j recognise. | Hollywood has just discovered that j there is more joy in the box-offices : when one comely gentleman is bathed jin his own eye-wash than .50 film queens crying themselves sick with the aid of a bottle of glycerine or a pound of the strongest Spanish onions. Indeed, I have private information from some of the most influential Hollywood studios that a rain gauge has been installed in all the best U.S.

cinemas, amply proving that the tearfall of an audience following a film showing one haudsome man bursting into tears is 90 per cent, greater than another merely revealing the commonplace spectacle of a girl messing up her make-up with her screen sorrows. It stands to reason, doesn’t it? After all, any woman in real life can be depended upon to produce for family edification at least one good old cry every six months. There’s nothing to it. And the only excitement we get. out of our screen heroine’s tears is the entire absence of all resultant sniffles and that red-nosed look usually common to the home brand. But think of the irresistible kick coming to us when we see Hollywood’s heroes turn on the floodgates! What exquisite agony to watch a strong outsize in tears trembling ou perfect masculine eyelashes! Something worth crying about, as you say. Well, as one of the strong but not

necessarily silent women, who has never in her life cried over more than two men (one being a stern visitor with a pretty blue paper in his hand), I most thoroughly resent this new lachrymal peril come among us. But before I myself sit down and have a good old cry at the prospect, I make one last appeal. Weep no more, sir. This is already such a. very damp climate.