HOLLYWOOD IN PERSON.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 18645, 26 December 1928, Page 4

HOLLYWOOD IN PERSON.

DAILY LIFE IN FILMDOM. (By MOLLIE MERRICK.) (Copyright by the North American Newspaper Alliance.) HOLLYWOOD, Cal, October 15. Those who carry the banner of art in the motion picture industry have hopes of making an honest woman out of what they admit is merely a paying business. Fred Murnau. German director, is foremost among these. Given the maximum of latitude in picture making, he strives to reach some realism — strives to approximate an ideal—which the clicking eye has so far missed. And to this effect he longs for the day when leading men and women will be chosen for their adherence to the characterisations of the story. Or for this ability to assume the qualities required by the people of the story, and inform them with drama, comedy and pathos. “ According to the present-day movie,” says Murnau. “every man is tall, handsome, thin-hipped and with wavy hair. Every woman is a beauty. Great stories do not always happen to the beautiful ones of the earth. Capacity for tremendous feeling is often given the less attractive physically. Their soul-range shows through more surelv then. In this regard nature knows a great deal more than the lords of the gelatine industry. x x a

While these same lords plotted and planned new financial coups in their office, some of the ladies lunched informally in a popular boulevard cafe. Sue Carol, back from Europe, but looking like the little high school girl from up State, as of yore Paris may have given Sue pleasure, but she did not find it in the salons of the designers, that’s certain.

Bilile Dove, the beauty, in a pale blue quilted taffetas sports coat, which looked slightly embarrassed at being found : outside of the boudoir for which the creator obviously intended it. W hen this was removed, la belle Dove was' frankly in a pale blue dinner gown. Sleeveless and cut decidedly decollete. This is Hollywood, where the lady's fancy becomes a fact.

Leatrice Joy, very conservative in black velvet, snowy ermine and a town hat. Here is beauty combined with dignity, and an intriguing charm which hints a broad and balanced mentality. Intelligence doesn't detract from a pretty face —legend to the contrary. Evelyn Brent, in pale grey and fluffy little grey furs. Her intense, narrow lace seemed to draw sensation out of the very air. She releases a feeling of power. One would say, seeing her casually, that here, perhaps, is an actress.

Jane Novak, who used to play leads with Bill Hart. Blonde, slender, patrician in golden browns. Yet the very young generation of lans would have to be told who she is. * x n Everyone chatting about Estelle Taylor's return to movieland. The Dempseys are popular in Hollywood. Have a beautiful home and a loyal set of adherents. Estelle Taylor need not Step out of the cinema atmosphere, and her Broadway adventure will probably cure all future attempts. A woman with value for the cinema, she has yet not had the opportunities to realise that value to the full. A bad voice made her a doubtful bet for the footlights. And not even Jack Dempsey’s popularity and the public’s avidity to see her in person could counteract such a handicap. K H Si Mr and Mrs Jimmie Gleason live on the hills above Hollywood. They invited a New York friend, who was passing through, to dine. At 8.30 the telephone rang and a desperate voice said: “I’m on the top of Outpost Mount. For pity’s sake come and get me! ” Mrs Jimmie sent the chauffeur on a rescue party. But the next morning she hied her to the stationer’s and had some letter paper made with a neat little map at the top of the page. I suggest they have compasses for dinner favours. Just to make sure.

Lia Tora will be the cinema beauty of the next six months. Longer than that one dares not forecast. She is from Brazil, and is of the fortunate group who are independently wealthy and use movies only as a charming diversion because famous directors insist on signing them up with largesized contracts.

Tora was seen by a camera man at a gathering in South America. She had gone there to chaperone her younger sister, and was not interested in motion pictures at all. But the camera man insisted on making a test. And Lia Tora photographed so beautifully that the studio insisted on making a contract. #

There was the matter of a husband. A wealthy Brazilian sportsman and prince of good fellows. He was quite agreeable, so they all came on to Holly wood, Lia on a five years’ contract.

Facial surgery experts of Hollywood advertise alluringly. And are given to fancifying their names a trifle. Behold then, Ethele and Irehne as the two most noted authorities on turning grandmas into gaga girlies. But if the lady cannot afford a lift, or if she is against the idea of having her face tucked, however artistically, they have perfected a little gadget which can be worn under the ladies’ hair and which lifts up the surplus face and keeps her smiling.

Yet the inventors of the iron maiden and the guillotine have been held up to world scorn as torturers.

Freak restaurants continue popular. Hollywood, as a town, caters exclusively to the eye. Shops are camouflaged to represent quaint Spanish inns. Ice cream stands become Esquimau igloos, made of papier-mache and mica dust.

And the inevitable restaurant is made as fanciful as the proprietor can manage. One of these, modelled after a round house, even goes so far as to have an abandoned engine built into one of its entrances.

There are weird places where food is served in convict uniforms, which, by the way, do duty for napkins in the absence of linen. No knives and forks are allowed here, and the cups are of tin. It is considered quite a lark for a ginny party in full dress to descend on one of these freak restaurants and make merry.

No one of these informal places is famous for movie attendance. -Motion picture stars are likely to drop in to the freak restaurant, but only as a haphazard part of the evening’s diversion. They mainly follow the established routine. Or have their parties in their own homes free from the prying eyes of tourists and souvenir hunters.

If a canvass were made to select the best all-round worker, business man and playboy in Hollywood, Harold Lloyd would win out easily. He has made one kind of picture and stuck to it. It is his truest form of expression. It has established clean comedy as a money-maker and has an entertainment value.

He has married only once. And finds in his home and wife and baby the same ideal companionship and delight that any 100 per cent citizen finds. Hollywood, as a movie town 1 yrith movieland s eccentric whimsies,

might be a million miles away. Lloyd has invested the tremendous fortune he has made practically. Real estate and stocks and bonds. And he has built, or is building, one of the showplaces of the West. A canoe course, a golf course, motion picture projection rooms and sound devices. A pipe organ. Everything to make modern life ideal.

As a playboy—ask the people he gathers round him. Among them j'ou will find the men who have worked with him through the years. Camera men, sports writers, gag men—the bulwark of loyalty and good-fellowship which have done much to carry Harold Lloyd to the top of the slippery mountain of movie fame and hold him there. it a :t I have been asking a few movieites what they would do if suddenly retired. Results were surprising. Few of the big people are absolutely at the mercy of the camera.

Milton Sills could go back to professoring, which he once did at Chicago University. Louis Wolheim could do the same thing at Cornell.

Alice White was a good stenographer, and feels that she could fill that job again. Dolores del Rio and Lupe Velez were both dancers before the camera claimed them. Dolores studied abroad and for pleasure, but is fully qualified to turn her studies to account. While both Leatrice Joy and Carmel Myers could use their singing voices in a paying way.

Adolphe Menjou speaks four languages, and feels that somebody ought to pay him something for the use of this knowledge. James Gleason can stop acting any time he wants, and devote himself exclusively to writing plays. He has the upper hand in that he divides his time evenly between these things at present. While writing Vilma Banky’s latest story he is getting one of his plays ready for talkies. Rehearsing his own part and casting the others.

George Fawcett has had some experience in editing papers. And years of experience on the legitimate stage before he made the grouchy old man popular in cinemas. And Fawcett, more than any other actor in Hollywood, understands the trick of making the audience come to him. Which is really the secret underlying his characterisations and the key to his many years in a life where careers are becoming increasingly shorter. Irene Rich tells me she has made quite a study of interior decoration. And Louise Fazenda has devoted so much of her spare time to antiques, rugs and period furnishings that she could open a shop of her own. Dorothy Mackaill is a graduate of Thorne Academy, London, and Dorothy Dwan tells me she would need only a few 1 weeks’ practice on the pipe organ to get back her old technique.

All the time 1 was terrified lest one would turn and ask me what were my accomplishments. It ■would have been my most e'tnbarrassing moment.

Rod La Rocque spends much time in the study of make-up. Lon Chaney is Hollywood’s accredited magician in this line. La Rocque’s artistry is bent not so much on freak make-up as in an exhaustive study of various mediums and the effects obtained.

In the basement of his home he has a motion-picture camera electrically operated. He photographs his face from all angles, develops the film himself, and studies the net result.

Polychromatic film has brought make-up down to a simple matter. That is, the conventional make-up. Colours

vary somewhat. - The old-fashioned red mouth doesn’t register at all. So when you see a lady with pale purple eyebrows and a raisin-coloured mouth you know she is all ready for the new' pro-

John Gilbert wears no make-up at all in many of his characterisations. And the heavy mask of grease-paint affected by the actress when movies were invented is a thing of the past. Many actresses are using a liquid said to be very effective. X « X If the life of Valentino is filmed—and reports say that it will be ere long—it is probable that an actor named Gordon Elliott w'ill play the role of the screen’s great lover. This despite the fact that Alberto Guglielmo, brother of Rudolph, has had his face remade by a plastic surgeon in order to fill his brother’s shoes in the motion-picture world. But Guglielmo does not resemble his brother so much as Elliott, in the opinion of Uliman, who will produce the picture. In make-up and from certain angles this blonde and blue-eyed actor is said to bear a very close resemblance to Rudolph Valentino. Peter Diege, a Danish actor, also not only resembles Valentino, but releases much of the same quality which Rudolph freed for his audience. If Valentino had been merely a matter of eyes and nose and mouth, six feet of good build and some technical training, he would soon have been forgotten. But when he went before the camera he emanated a magnetism which caused definite vibrations in his audience. And this is the "Valentino” quality which goes far beyond resemblance or tricks of gesture. « X k They’re no respecters of climate or comfort, these Hollywood producers. They make snow scenes in July and August, employing a large freezing plant to manufacture ice in the studio tank. The>' use up a couple of carloads of marble dust and salt, and impress the propellers of aeroplanes to blow about the rolled oats which serve for a studio snow-storm. The actor staggers along with earpads, fur cap, muffler, fifty-pound coat, great felt-lined goloshes and fur gloves. Above and around him are tremendous studio lights, themselves a miniature Turkish bath. The sun of Southern California beating on the roof of the barn-like structures adds its quota to the general misery.

Then visit the sets in the heart of winter. You find a tank three hundred yards long. On the surface of the water float half a dozen carloads of crumbled cork.. This gives the effect of heavy mud. Gnarled trees and various impedimenta carry out the illusion of a dismal swamp. A chill wind that cuts like a knife makes you hold your coat tighter about you. And your very marrow winces as several hundred extras are herded into the freezing w'ater for a sequence. Not once, but over and over again. The studio provides hot coffee which the actors gulp avidly as they come out of the water, blue and chattering with cold. The studio also provides dressing-rooms with stoves and dry clothing. But an extra is above such softness. Sometimes his gallant fight to be game in the face of adversity calls out the admiration of the most calloused studio employees. But being an extra becomes a disease —not a calling—after the second year. Copyright 1928 by the “ Star ” and North American Newspaper Alliance.