The filmgoers' annual (1932)

p*m $7(> The Filmgoers' Annual The star of to-day lives in the presence of a camera which sees and hears. In the studios they say the talking picture camera can photograph the soul. That is scarcely an exaggeration. Much may be done to groom a person and to train a voice, but the material for the grooming and the training must be there to begin with, since the basis of the star is personality. That is the first impression one gathers on meeting a talking picture star of great enough distinction to be in the select sixty-four. One finds an interesting personality — one with exceptional charm, one with a sensitive mind, one with an understanding of drama. I can very honestly say that the great majority of cinema stars greatly deserve their success. As a whole they are people of great attainments and great diligence, who take their work seriously and who are utterly removed from the charge of temperament. The too many tales that are told of this star and of that being unreasonable and unstable are largely fiction. It does happen, in a few cases, that, in the fierce glare of the limelight, some go astray, but, in all places and in all professions, success is a heady wine. In the world of motion pictures the wonder is that so few lose their balance, wherefore one argues that another attribute of stardom is character. Generally one argues that the quality which makes a great cinema star is not very different from the quality which has made stars in other spheres of human enterprise. In all cases we find that magical, mystical quality which excites one to hero-worship. And so one finds that the stars of the screen who are the gods and goddesses of to-day are not different from the gods and goddesses of yesterday. There is only a matter of time and of circumstance between them. Those who are the makers of their own destiny are the greatest of them all, because at every throw of the film dice they stake their fame and fortune on your approval or disapproval. It is their task to gauge the trend of public sentiment to which there are no guides other than experience and instinct. When I spoke to Mary Pickford of the possibility of her retirement, she said : " You know as much about that as I do. It all depends on whether or not the public will continue to look at my pictures. It is public judgment and public judgment alone that must decide the fate of every one of us." That is the other side of glamour. That is the star looking to the public, wondering what is Q^HE film industry has tried again and again to find ^ another Mary Pickford. There is never likely to be another. She came to the screen, in its earliest days, representing romance and laughter. She has been called the World's Sweetheart — a happy title, richly deserved, since in her pictures she has represented to every youth, who has ever visited in a cinema, the girl of his dreams. She stands for the beautiful and tender things in life. Her service to the cinema has been past all computing. likely to happen, seeking to interpret and to anticipate your likes and dislikes — to present the one and to avoid the other. To the stars of the screen who take their work seriously, everything they do in their work and in their private lives is governed by it being necessary that they should retain your favour. That is not easy. You change your mind so often, and so often the audiences which go to the cinemas change their identity. It is not so universally true now as it was before dialogue came to the screen, but the film audience still remains in great part an audience of youth. There is, as I write, spectacular evidence of that fact in the flight from pictures of sophistication. The filmgoer is fundamentally a romantic, only cinema stars who recognise that fact and who are prompted by it to make pictures having a romantic basis, are likely to remain in popular favour. It is an essential ingredient in the glamour of the stars that they deal in those things which represent our dreams and our ideals.