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Aoutk^jeasick
If Monte Was Blue When He Went There, He Came Back a Vivid Indigo
By Dorothy Calhoun
IF a certain author ever visits Hollywood, he is hereby advised to wear false whiskers and call himself "O'Donovan" instead of "O'Brien." This author once wrote a book — such a glamourous book about the South Seas that aged millionaires and staid college professors and hardened movie producers dreamed, after readingit, of tropic moons and bare brown limbs whirling in the hula hula, and flowers as large as hogsheads. He wrote about lovely — and loving — ladies with such charming names as Gaga (Love Talk) and Pepi (Some Kid), who offered bowls of poi while one reclined languidly on a mat in a thatched hut. He wrote of an earthly paradise where one has not a care in the world.
He neglected to mention that the tropic moonlight was malarial, the bare brown limbs were pudgy, and the thatched hut was inhabited by scorpions and centipedes. He knew, did Mr. Frederick O'Brien, that all civilized people are hungry for romance, and homesick for the jungle, and he gave them what they wanted. After all, the South Seas were a long distance off, and Cook didn't run a tour there.
The Metro-Goldwyn company that has been in Tahiti for five months filming "White Shadows in the South Seas" would like to meet Mr. O'Brien personally. They have read his book, and they want to talk it over with him, somewhere where the police won't interfere. Not, of course, you understand that Director W. S. Van Dyke or Monte Blue, or any member of their company of sixty went to Papeete to see hula dancers or to have native belles hang wreaths around their necks. Their purpose (you understand) was solely to produce some Art. But they can't help feeling that Mr. O'Brien had his tongue in his cheek while writing that book. Instead of being a place where one forgets his troubles, the South Seas, so far as they are concerned, is a place where one discovers a whole lot of new troubles he never even thought of before.
Leprosy and Canned Salmon
After five months of being rained on, scorched dry by t a fierce sun, bitten by the entire collection of Tahitian insectivora, exposed to leprosy, elephantiasis and other interesting diseases, bored almost to the murder point by the unmitigated company of each other, fed on tinned salmon until the very sight of a can opener turns them pale, the exiles from Hollywood have returned with an interesting theory.
Raquel Torres and Monte Blue
and the South Seanery of the
Island of Tahiti, where "White
Shadows" was filmed
The South Seas of romance exist only in books like Mr. O'Brien's and in moti o n pictures such as they have brought back w i t h the m, which has inspired the Metro-Goldwyn publicity department to such lyric outbursts as these :
"The first true story of the South Seas, Southern skies, passionate women, and the coming of the white man to a. strange land. The most beautiful scenery, the most interesting people ever filmed."
Yet — says Monte Blue feelingly, the South Seas are the bunk ! The legend of their loveliness is a lie. The romantic beach-comber is in reality a shiftless tramp, the {Continued on page 82)
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