HOLLYWOOD IN PERSON.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 18938, 7 December 1929, Page 26 (Supplement)

HOLLYWOOD IN PERSON.

DAILY LIFE IN FILMDOM. (Written for the “Star’* by MOLLIE MERRICK.) The Value of the Comedy. It is inevitable that the trend of comedy should change with the introduction of talk. The nuances which speech brings to humour are beginning to show in what was yesterday the tworeel slapstick comedy of the village. Two-reelers—by no means the smallest department of movie making—carry a unique burden in the evening’s entertainment. When a feature picture of great pathos or tragedy has been given, when a story of terrific dramatic tension has kept the audience keyed up for more than an hour, the two-reeler, is the anodyne. On it falls the burden of reviving the spirits of the public. It comes to eyes sometimes bright with tears. It falls across the gloomy mood engendered by some tragic tale. It must be gay and sill}' without being offensive. Funny without being beyond the limits set by good taste. To its making some of the cleverest brains of the village have been dedicated. And at the time talking pictures broke across a silent art the imaginations and resources of this group had been strained to the breaking point in the search for new situations. The talking art brings to comedies such delicious nonsense as the burlesque of Faro Nell by A 1 Christie. In the early days of movie making the West was the field of all romance. Heroes wore Stetsons and chaparajos —carried six-shooters which they used on the slightest provocation— met at the long mining town bars or the saloons of the cowpunching paradises which were the locale of their hearty adventurings. The Faro Nell story was made and remade with slight variations in plot and scene. It was the old tale of the girl raised in a mining camp among the crude musketeers who searched for gold in the California hills. Each picture ended with a near-hanging. The hero, under a cloud for a crime he didn’t commit, was invariably found astride a horse under a spreading oak with the noose neatly adjusted about his neck. Just as the rope was to be pulled the rescue gang arrived. . This is the tale burlesqued/m the Christie version done with talk. Louise Fazenda, the Faro Nell of the picture, brings some of the most delicious comedy of her entire screen career to this ironic travesty which would not have been possible in pantomime. The dialogue is delicious When the hero returns to camp after a pursuit of the villain, bringing his quarry (inky moustache and all) back into the old saloon neatly lassoed about the arms, he says: “ I brung him back fellows, to see that justice would be did/’ And his father’s reply: “ Son, ye done ( well.” All the old-time music graces a travesty as amusing as anything that has ever come to the theatre, and yet lacking the simple ruses of the man in the barrel, the chap falling through a window, the comedy chase, the comedy fall and the other comedy dodges, including pie throwing. A ripple of laughter characterises the new type comedies. They do not provoke the howls once the accompaniments of the old slapstick silent. The pudience wants to follow the thread of the story, so mutes its enjoyment to ward that end. There is a decided trend toward a swifter tempo. A 1 Christie is one of the producers who is dismissing directors wedded to the old slow tempo of silent cinema'. “ What if they do miss a line?” is his slogan—they miss many a line in a wellrhythmed, legitimate play. Christie

•urges swifter tempo and selection of stories for their merit. He doesn’t carry a stock company on his lot. But rather selects the comedies to be made, then reaches out and gets stars to fit the roles in them. Which is the exact reverse of picture making as employed by the majority of studios that are always searching for roles to fit their star players—and mutilating good plays to make them eligible for these favourites. j.j Artificial Aid. A select inner circle has turned thumbs down on powder and paint. So we find Virginia Valli, Natalie Moorhead, Mary Eaton and Eleanor Boardman going about facially unadorned. It’s something new. And this section of America just dotes on that. Enthusiasts in this new art of being beautiful look pretty much as any American women of their respective ages would appear without artificial aid to pulchritude. Now and again nature moulds and colours a human being perfectly. In the main she has made a haphazard job of creation. Artifice, artistically indulged in, adds lustre to Nature. The vogue will probably not last long. Ladies of Hollywood have been too long accustomed to being stared at to relish being ignored. Few of the local lights unadorned stop the traffic with their pulchritude. They’re just nice looking girls. h*le some of the nice-looking girls are going about sans artifice, others rarely appear without full war paint. It takes about two hours to really put on a village face. This process includes a coating of grease paint so carefully applied that from two feet distance it appears to be a smooth, velvetv unlined skin carefully powdered. Some ladies never face the public without their false eyelashes. The studio product is as artfully made as can be imagined. Mounted in fishskin and carefully graded in uneven lengths, these lashes are daintily mascaraed to give the final effect of nat-

uralness. Irene Rich more often than not wears hers. The public are accustomed to seeing her with them in pictures, and she’s quite frank about them. She would be —she is one of the most thoroughly first-rate persons in motion pictures. One of her greatest assets is her. hair, which, simply coiffed and exquisitely cared for, emphasises her true femininity and grace. Great Greta wears artificial eyelashes before the camera, and removes them promptly when the lights are turned off and the clicking eye has ceased. Great Greta gets into a make-up for street appearances which defies the detective art of even her most enthusiastic admirers. One of her films recently ran in a Boulevard theatre. She bought a seat and strolled in with the crowd. All about her were men and women who would have mobbed her had they recognised the tall sirl in tweed overcoat and beret standing in their midst. Eve Southern’s eyelashes have been the source of too many arguments to start another one here. Lupe \ elez tells the story of neatly ripping them off one evening. But Eve Southern was publicised as the girl who had to have her eyelashes trimmed before she could appear before the camera. :•: Will Rogers’s First TalkieWill Rogers, erstwhile mayor of Beverly Hills, scored a knockout in talkie annals with his first “audible” picture. To audiences sated with courtroom scenes, underworld meller-drammers and richly upholstered intrigue with little spring to commend it, his picture comes like a breeze from a clover field. It is a triumph in American genre —a story of Pike Peters of Oklahoma, oil millionaire who was once a veterinary, and the school-teacher wife who developed a craving for “background”# when wealth came to them. Beyond carrying the matrix of sheer comedy throughout with its accompanying vein of pathos, the picture attains something not yet touched by audible efforts. It is timed so the audience is able to en-

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