HOLLYWOOD IN PERSON.

Star (Christchurch), Volume LXVI, Issue 20483, 8 December 1934, Page 28 (Supplement)

HOLLYWOOD IN PERSON.

By MOL LIE MERRICK. HOLLYWOOD, November 12. Taking stock recently of Hollywood’s isolation hunters, one discovers that all the apostles of seclusion —all the enthusiasts for the unlisted telephone number, the hidden house, the very private life—all those who talk at length about getting away from everyone and everything, including their coworkers—are practically backyard neighbours. The hna! shuffle and the changing of popular localities has landed them where they can hold backfence conversations or extend an invitation for a cocklaii by the simple means of stepping to the garden wall and calling “ Yoo-hoo ! ” Greta Garbo really began the vogue for Santa Monica as a permanent hideout. The old Miramar Hotel was her place of residence when Santa Monica was a swim-place to the rest of the colon}'. Even Marion Davies didn’t live there all the year round at that time. Now Norma Shearer lives there in a house so constructed that you can’t hear the sound of the sea or get the damp sea air unless you arc of a mind to. Architects found themselves up against something different in this commission, as most owners of sea-front property consider that wave-wash the high-light oi their ocean dwelling. Nowadays, if you g«.t into the region between Beverly Hills and Santa Monica, you may find the Clark Gables, Greta Garbo, Joan Crawford, Elissa Landi, the Lionel Atwills, Miriam Hopkins, and so on. Up around Ronald Colman’s hidden house on the hills above Hollywood Boulevard, William Powell, his closest friend, has just built a lovely residence. Richard Barthelmess is near by. They can shout to one another when trimming a hedge or playing on the tennis courts. When Jean HershoU discovered that Jeannette Macdonald lived close by, he had a hole cut in the party hedge so that she could slip m and have afternoon tea with Mrs Mersholt without the trouble of going around the block. If Gloria Swanson and Constance Bennett were chummy (which they are not), they could visit between their Beverly 11 ills homes in less time than it takes to say M Jack kobmson.” The Charles Butterworths and C. Henry Gordon are side by side; and William Howard and Edna May Oliver are neighbours. The English colony—the Charles Laughtons, Evelyn Lave Frank Lawton, Jean Caicll.' Hugh Wil-liams--are all together in a Hollywood apartment court. Yet they’ll all tell you they want isolation and want to talk about something r ise than pictures when the camera ceases to grind at 6 p.m. About Interviews. The greatest change in the cinema scene since the coming nf talkies is the tenor of a Hollywood interview. Hollywood interviews used to be staged. Some of them still are; but, for the most part, and when dealing with news services, the old clapt-ap has been abandoned. Ladies Iving on leopard skins no longer give forth weird ! theories about life and love and the l hereafter, to the accompaniment of low music and the aggravation of cheap inI cense; and a I lolly wood leading man

is past the time when he is ashamed to let. you know that he thinks as well as feels.

You do not interview an Irving Cobb every day. Hollywood doesn’t receive an Irving Cobb into its midst very often almost never. So I cannot line up a talk with this rare and rich personality alongside the years of Hollywood chats. It may safely be compared with recent, interviews, though; for since the locai scene has changed, it's a different story.

In the same week that one talks to an Irving Cobb there’s a Hugh Walpole; and in the identical fortnight comes a talk witn Henry Wilcoxon, ' British actor, whose hiain functions in a manner that would be horrifying to the old-time picture srar. In fact, Wilcoxon will tell you frankly that the more the Hollywood actor ponders on the average part given him, the worse it gets. Most of our roles are written for men who do not think and are to be dished up to people who do not want to think. However, before he played the role of Mark Antony, this actor admits that he read not only a few intimate histories of the famous pair but e\ erything he could get his hands on. The result was that one British actor in Hollywood knew the psychology of the role he was attempting and. therefore, realising the limits imposed on him by the scrip, has a definite feeling of the lacks in his performance. His feeling of this is more intense than that of anyone else who happened to see it, by the way. “ crowded the happenings of many years of Antony’s life into the measure of an evening’s entertainment.” said Wilcoxon to me. “We didn’t want the man to age. and his ( leopatra to age with him, so changes that were very drastic—psychological changes in the man—were accomplished in minutes almost when actually sucW changes came about with the passing of time .... several years in some instances. The changes in action and decision were the direct result of maturing soul, ageing body experience, reflection, remorse and even regret.

emorse and even regret. Cram them all into a couple of hours —and lit them all into the personality of a man who remains a young man from the beginning of the evening to the end of it. and what can you do? “ There was nothing left to do but lay the sudden and tremendous changes which occurred in the charactei at the door of eccentricity. That I had to do. But that again was alien to the Antony I had conceived Therefore I was dissatisfied with the part and cannot enthuse over it or even approach the satisfaction which some roles I have done for the screen in England gave me.” Picture your film actor of a few years back doing anything of this sort, or bothering to think about it or be troubled by it, once it was “in the can ” as they say of gelatine strip in Hollywood.

A talk with Irving Cobb is like a trip on a magic carpet. His mind swings in a great arc about the world to-day. lighting each corner with vivid humour and changing with lightninglike swiftness to serious contemplation of some problem. There is a plummet drop into beauty at times that leaves you breathless. A man who loves cities and people and things; a man who has little time for self-love; a great big laughing creature who tells you in the first five minutes that he

will give Hollywood two years of his time—just two years and n r more. Then, *he wants the world back again, lie is sure by that time he will be angry with Hollywood for having taken that world away from him. and he sincerely hopes that the exigencies of picture-making will not prevent him from going to the Bohemian Gtove and meeting all the men he has known there in other years because they are the finest set of fellows anywhere under the sun. “ San Francisco,” he tells you with a fine light in his eye, “ has some rare spirits. I don’t meet their like in other places. Imagine any other part of the world having a Downey Ilarvev—a nature half-gnome, half-devil, all-angel, that intrigues and , enchants you always.” I could | imagine. In his seventies, Downey i Harvey is the most amazing personality I have yet encountered on my march through life. It is a rare privilege to have known him and to have listened to him. He is a man fifty years beyond his time —a whole generation beyond his fellows in his attitude towards life and people. A chat about him made my interview with Irving Cobb unforgettable—that, and a sort of rainbowed laughter which ran through it. And we never talked about what he likes for breakfast or what he thinks about love! And as for art —your true artist hesitates to label it. Into the Open. Anna Sten, who remained pretty much a mystery during the first year of her residence in Hollywood, will come right out in to the open with the premiere of ** We Live Again,” making some personal appearances and giving some interviews. The film world is ready for a new race—Shirley Temple’s vogue is waning so rapidly that the rocket which

shot up with such tremendous momentum would seem to have a leaden weight upon it for its downward arc. Not that the little Shirley fails in any measure; she is as astonishing in her last picture as she was in the first one. She has been over-exploited—roles disproportionate to the architecture of the story, have been “written in’* for her. A child occupies just so much legitimate interest in any tale prepared for adult entertainment. Stretch that interest into fields where it doesn’t rightfully belong and you not only weaken the picture, but you shorten the professional usefulness of the child. The Katharine Hepburn vogue has settled down into measured appreciation. Katharine Hepburn will always have her enthusiastic followers —and I am one of them, even when she isn’t up to her best. I love to watch that amazing countenance, the play of light across it, the swift changes, the spiritual currents; but our dear public wants to plunge into a new frenzy over some screen star. Anna Sten, with her excellent new picture, has a fine chance. Back to Life. When a professor at the University of California experimented on dead dogs and brought them back to life, we all read of it with the pleasure which an Arabian night’s tale usually gives when we find it in our daily news. J. P. M’Evoy saw in it a story for Charles Laughton, and promptly wrote down the idea for “ Man Alive,” which Paramount immediately bought. This brings Charles Laughton back into i the horror class once more; it is the i field in which he does the most bril- ] screen work. 1 (Copyright by the "Star** and N.A.N.A. All rights reserved.)