HOLLYWOOD IN PERSON.

Star (Christchurch), Volume XLIV, Issue 62, 14 March 1931, Page 23 (Supplement)

HOLLYWOOD IN PERSON.

J: Ma£il r M*rtickS)\ (Copyright by the “Star” and the North American Newspaper Alliance.) All rights reserved. HOLLYWOOD, January 27. Versatile Actor. All the limelight which went Bill Powell’s way in the Paramount Studios of yore will now be thrown to Frederick March, who has covered a wide gamut of types—a far greater latitude of characterisation than most of the Hollywood stars can attempt, In one release Frederick March was a sailor playing opposite Clara Bow. In the next, a Bohemian musician with Nancy Carroll. Then he stepped into the “ royal family*” and his parody iof Jack Barrymore went down with all the great character cartoons of time. Frederick March has youth, a splendid histrionic background, and delightful sensitivity of countenance. He also has romantic appeal. So has Bill Powell—the ladies do not always like them so conventionally handsome—but Powell’s attraction is of a different type, and his scope of characterisations far more limited. Authors Disciplined. ! Authors the while are finding things a bit more rigid than they used to be. Discipline at one studio is strict. Authors are not allowed desk telephones, and, should they need to 'phone outside, must go to a booth at the end of a corridor supervised by a studio doorman, who keeps an eagle eye on the length of time they rise in idle talk. Added to this, they have the pleasure of paying 10 cents for a 5 cent call. They are not allowed to go out for luncheon—which helps to keep home fires burning in the comissarv. But one wag sent every dish back until the dining-room steward asked him not to enter the room as aspecial favour to him. He lunches at his club, in high feather. Oh, yes, the boys are given their day’s mail just before they leave, of nights, so they won’t read it in office time. Silly! And the amount of dialogue they do is counted up by an office boy, who goes the rounds tabulating toil each evening. Films for Children. When fifteen hundred clubwomen gathered a few mornings back to discuss the future of films and the danger of their children attending matinees where the stars might be of a calibre not fit to cater for the entertainment of little children, they came to the following conclusion:—Either film stars had to lead the sort of lives the fathers and mothers of these little children were living in the community, or special films would have to be made for the matin.ees to which these little children, would be sent.

Lucile Gleason, who addressed the women on the subject of children’s films, made the following brilliant observation: —“Little children are tired businessmen on Saturday afternoons. You have got to provide them with real entertainment—not feed them educational films and news-reels which they should be getting in their classrooms. There has never been such tardiness in any branch of education. All endeavour is in getting the educational talkie reel into the schools of America. No liner way of teaching children could be devised and yet we, who make a fetish of giving the younggeneration every benefit that modern methods can devise, hold back from this most obvious way of furthering the progress of to-day’s education.” Lucile Gleason is embarked vipon a | scheme, to introduce the French reel [into neighbour theatres. A fifteen minj ute lesson to be shown once each evening, between performances. Esther Ralston. It’s fashionable to be domestic in pre-sent-day cinema circles. So it’s quite in the picture for Esther Ralston to announce that she will retire from pictures for a while now, as she will become a mother, ller coming months will be spent in travel with her husband ; they will leave for Europe in the near future. Esther Ralston recently made a splendid comeback in “ The Southerner ” which will be Lawrence Tibbett’s forthcoming picture. One hears that her work is excellent and that her camera quality is still of the high rank it has always held. Esther Ralston spent some time in vaudeville on the East Coast, after talkies broke in Hollywood. She acI quired the technique of spoken art i and her return to pictures was considered one of the most successful comebacks of this year. When you are gone from the camera for a year, you're a comeback; that shows how fast we move these days! The Epitome of Youth. Jesse Lasky’s latest star, Carman Barnes, is still a slim little thing with great brooding dark eyes. She’s the epitome of youth— to watch and to listen to—she’s the quintessence of satin-skinned Juvenalia. She’s slim and blonde and modern and sweet. And, therefore, she's what I consider a very good bet in motion pictures. I talked to her this morning in her hillside home in Hollywood. The fiat clack-clack of the typewriter heralded J her presence, long before my motor had stopped before her door. She is j writing her own story—the story in which she will appear in the capacity of a star. It’s an unusual situation. But Hollywood is made up of unusual situations. And this Southern girl who has written a successful play, done a bit of sculpture, had two books published and otherwise glorified her sex, is just the material for unusual situations. . I don’t know what stardom will do § ® ® HI IS ® HI ® @ HI HI ® ® @ ® ® ® ® ®

to Carman Barnes. Just now she is the most charming debutante in the world—not typical debutante because there is a tine mind behind all that satin-skinned youth. She’s a reader oi Hemmingway, of Somerset Maugham, of Ida A. R. Wylie. She’s an admirer of Liam O’Flaherty, and an enthusiast over “Mr Gilhooley,” the very artistic play which even Miss Helen Hayes and Mr Ernest Sinclair couldn’t popularise in this era of hard times. She’s a girl with great determination underneath j all her pulchritude. She's wanted to : be an actress from the very beginning. But she knows, deep down in her heart, that Southern men don’t care to have their women surpass them, and she tells 3-011 laughingly: “I held back in the South. Men of any localit}don’t like to have women be too smart. But men of the South particularly hate it.” And. sa\*s Carman Barnes. “ when a Southern woman gets a chance, she surpasses a Southern man ever y time ! ” I like her spirit. I like her slim little eager body. 1 like the enthusiasm she brings to the future. She likes theatricalism. Not when its overdone, but just when its nice, health>theatricalisrn. She’s always intended to be an actress, but she thought she’d have to write for years and years until I she could venture into the hazardous ! world of make-believe. Carman Barnes comes from a creai tive generation. Her mother wanted j to be an actress —but Southerners had ideas about that in her generation, so she wrote poetry instead. But behind her apparent acquiescence burned the determination that her child would have the career which she had longeu for and which had been denied her. New Chaplin Picture. Since the days the silent screen took voice and an industry was thrown into chaos therebi’, there has not been such excitement in Hollywood as exists to-day. Next week, Charlie Chaplin, opening cold with a silent picture at ten dollars the head, will, for all time, determine in the minds of producers the old question. “Are talkies a failure ? ” The secrecy of the try-outs of this picture is unprecedented in cinema history. Nobody save that small staff of workers who have been with Chaplin through man> r years of triumphs, knows anything about “City Lights.” It is costing some producers a pretty penny to find out. All must be in on the premiere. There is not a moment to lose. Dialogue sequences galore may be cut out of pictures the very next morning. Or those producers smile, settle back in their easj l, chairs, and say “We have been right: you cannot stop progress.” At ten dollars the ticket, it has cost one producer two hundred dollars to have his executive staff there on the opening night. They’ll burn some midnight oil afterwards, when they will go into a huddle over the silent movie which the world’s greatest star of pantomime champions unreservedly. II ® 1® ® @ @ ® ® HI HI ® ® H H ® HI HI H 111 11