The Moving Row of magic Shadow Shapes

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXXVII, Issue 19750, 17 March 1934, Page 11

The Moving Row of magic Shadow Shapes

The height of incompetence, according to Jack Oakie is a drum-major with an inferiority complex. George Barbier, Paramount player, holds a record in Hollywood for married life. He and Carrie Thatcher, former actress, have been married for thirty-four years. Spencer Tracy has been given a new contract, which came as a surprise to Tracy as the old one had several months to run. The contract was in the nature of a bonus for his brilliant performance in “The Power and the Glory” in which he is starred with Colleen Moore, and Ralph Morgan.

Alice Brady once again supplies brilliant entertainment in “Stage Mother,” adapted from an original story by Bradford Ropes, who wrote “FortySecond Street.” Alice Brady scores an even greater triumph than in “When Ladies • Meet” in her characterisation of the ambitious mother who will stop at nothing to further the career of her daughter. Others cast in this production include Franchot Tone, Maureen O’Sullivan, and Phillips Holmes.

I Movie stars have to rise very early while on a picture and spend an hour or more being made up. Ruth Chatterton sleeps right through it. While working in “Female” she used a spe- | cial make-up couch upon which she | slept while the make-up artists put | her through the morning ordeal. She ! says that she stays full of pep right to j the end of a long day’s work because of j that extra hour's sleep. ; Recording dialogue in a temperature j of 110 degrees is virtually impossible, j it was discovered by Sound Director i Earl Hayman during the location trip j ] to Oregon of “Golden Harvest.” With j the temperature of from 100 to 120 in i the wheat fields, the rapidly rising air | made it tremendously difficult to rei cord the voices of the actors. A | brisk wind also arose each day shortly i after noon and it was impossible to | keep it from whistling around the microphones. So, for an hour or more each day they took scenes only ■when the conditions were suitable. Featured in “Golden Harvest” are Genevieve Tobin, Chester Morris, and Richard Arlen. A novel method for film directors, producers, and writers, to estimate the talents, and potentialities, and promise of a studio's young players has just | been launched by a group of youthful Paramount players who gave a stock company performance of “Double Door” in the studio theatre recently. ■ The audience was composed exclusively | of producers, directors, production exe- | cutives, assistant directors and writers, j Phyllis Lougliton, Paramount’s diction I coach directed the Broadway play which was written by Elizabeth McFadden. Declaring the experiment to be of inestimable value, studio officials pointed to Ida Lupino, Gwenllian Gill, Larry (Buster) Crabbe, Barbara Fritchie, Eldred Tidbury, Colin Tapley, and June Madison, as young players of real promise. The Misses Lupino and Gill portrayed the parts of middle-aged spinsters. With the success of the performance, Miss Loughton plans to present her group in a stock company performance once a week. Plays which i Paramount purchased for filming will be the only ones given. Prior to this experiment, studio directors and executives often were compelled to choose young players for important parts in pictures without having any more knowledge of their ability than that displayed in bit roles.

The very dignified George Arliss appears for the first time in his picture I career in his bare feet in “The Working Man. ’ Not only does he go barefoot, but he seems to enjoy it as much as a small boy, as he puts his feet up on the rail of a fishing smack and wriggles his toes. More than a score of dialects and accents of the English language were encountered by Phyllis Loughton, Hollywood diction coach when she began training the thirty winning contestants who won the world-wide competition to fill the cast of Paramount’s “Search for Beauty.”

“And who is Mae West?” The above question was asked by Marlene Dietrich, creator of “mannish styles for women” . . . but now looking as

frilly and feminine and curvy as West herself. This latter fact, reports a Hollywood movie magazine, no doubt prompted the young reporter to ask her how she liked the Mae West styles. In answer to which La Dietrich raised her exotic eyebrows and asked the question that has set the entire film colony a-buzzing. The battle’s on! Marlene has made the first move. Now watch for developments. They should be interesting, inasmuch as both gals are under contract to the same studio —and their meeting is inevitable!

Gordon James, w T ho plays the detective, Pillbream in “Summer Lightning,” is actually Sydney Lynn, brother of Ralph Lynn, who stars in this British and Dominions film. Gordon James, for such he insists on being called, has had 30 years’ stage experience. For the past 11 years he has been a member of the Aldwych Theatre company, having joined the original cast of the historic “Tons of Money,” which, first presented by Tom Walls at the Shaftesbury, was transferred to the Aldwych and so began the Aldwych cycle. v

Dorothy Arzner is the only woman picture director in Hollywood. More than that, she is the only woman who ever directed a talking motion picture. She belongs among Hollywood's six greatest women, because she is a pioneer, because, as a woman, she broke down an age-old tradition against women, because she is definitely one of the most successful executives of one of the biggest industries in the United States, and because she fought her way to the top with courage, hard work and sheer ability.

Tom Wall’s latest British and Dominions picture “Blarney Stone” was specially written for him by A. R.

Rawlinson, author of the story of

“Leap Year,” and additional dialogue was added by Lennox Robinson, well known Irish playwright. The action is set in an Irish district not twenty

guiles from Cork, and in London, sequences calling for extensive shots of the London Embankment by night and of familiar scenes in the city. The story concerns Tim Fitzgerald (Tom Walls), who has more than the ordinary share of Irish charm and luck owing to the fact that his parents took him as quite a small child, to kiss the famous Blarney Stone, and A. R. Rawlinson has developed this material on comic and dramatic lines.

Few screen actors have such an imposing war record as Herbert Marshall. Joining up with the British forces shortly after the commencement of hostilities, Marshall fought on until a severe wound invalided him out of the army. He is at present appearing in ‘The Solitaire Man.” a Metro-Gold-wyn-Mayer attraction dealing with Scotland Yard and Continental crookdom.

Presented by British Dominion Films. “Rome Express” one of the most widely discussed films of the year, stands out as a challenge to the film world. Not only England and Australia. but also America have classed it as “Britain’s miracle picture,” and one of the finest ever released from any studio. One of the most glittering and colourful premieres ever conducted in London was that which greeted this super production. Royal patronage being given. Shortly to be shown in Timaru is Universal's “S.O.S. Iceberg.” one of the most amazing pictures ever screened. The filming of the picture was fraught with hazards. Universal sent an expedition, composed of thirty-eight actors, technicians and scientists, into northern Greenland, only fifteen degrees from the North Pole. For six [months the company fought cold, exi jjosure and hardships in an effort to capture authentic shots for a story of a lost expedition. Dr. Arnold Franck, leader of the expedition, required the aid of Knud Rasmussen, noted Danish explorer. The equipment for the ,expedition included motor sledges, motor boats, an enormous stock of provisions, three Junker airplanes, and portable electric devices designed against the extreme cold to ensure sound recording of arctic phenomena never before brought to the screen. “S.O.S Iceberg” includes among its spectacular seAurora Borealis in full sight, the crashing of a plane on an ice island and the explosion of a two and a half million ton mass of ice. A minor incident which barely escaped being a major catastrophe in the making of the film was a terrific fight between a mail and polar bear. Stunt flying over the jagged mountains of Greenland by Major Ernest Udet, German aviation ace, provides many of the thrills in “S.CXS. Icfcbarg.”