Motion Picture Magazine (Aug 1928-Jan 1929)

SOUTH SEASICK Up a tree? Up in what looks lik natives who once fished with a spear for their living have degenerated since the coming of the white man. The white man's diseases are fast depopulating the islands. It was well that they had brought their "beautiful native girl" for the picture from Hollywood, for the author of "White Shadows" was either a poor judge of feminine beauties, or he fibbed ! Director Van Dyke has passed on the legend of the South Seas. He has given the public what it wants to believe ; that somewhere on earth there is an enchanted island in an azure sea, where soft breezes blow and soft eyes shine and man need not toil for a living. He has brought back only South Seas he did not find himself. The picture is filled with lovely brown maidens and wreaths of hibiscus (or should one say hibiscuses?), with native feasts and tropic kisses, romantic beachcombers and intoxicating dances. It is enough to start a trek of Long Island commuters and inhibited spinsters toward the South Seas. It is guaranteed to trouble the dreams of fathers of large familes. No one who sees the picture they have made will believe that Tahiti is not what O'Brien calls it, "An earthly paradise." They will say, looking at the dreaming lagoons, the mountains and groves of banyan trees, "Those actor fellows must be crazy ! That's the most beautiful spot I've ever seen. The camera can't lie, can it? Trouble with those Hollywood birds, they're too soft. They've got to have things easy — " Turkish-Bath Beds "JWFaxy a time," says Director Van Dyke, "I said 'when I get back, I'm going to buy myself a corner lot in Death Valley, build a bungalow and settle down in comfort.' I've never felt such heat. Wet heat, steamy. I'd put on a fresh suit of white ducks in the morning and ten minutes later they'd be wringing wet. At night the bed sheets would be sodden a few moments after I got between them. I didn't even try to sleep. I'd get a few drinks just to cast a rosier light over the prospect of more months in Tahiti, and then I'd read or write all night. The next morning it would be raining. It rains every minute of the day, somewhere on the island, and between showers the sun would burn us up. We all had 'rain-tan.' It is much more painful than ordinary sunburn. Inside of a week we were all mahogany-colored." Fresh from reading "White Shadows" the company came ashore with visions of living an idyllic life in a village of thatched (Continued from page 31) huts. But the French settlers who met them laughed at the suggestion. No, no ! A white man could not live like a native, unless he had gone native himself, as some few had. They took them to the best several, it would seem. Monte Blue and Raquel Torres seek refuge e a bad dream but is really a banyan tree in the South Sea jungle hotel of the town. The open public sewer ran, gurgling prettily outside their windows. When Monte Blue drove a nail into the wall of his room to hang his coat on, an astonishing procession of insect life swarmed out. Scorpions scuttled out of their boots in the morning, cockroaches as big as mice ran across the dining room table. Eating Fish Eyes "J got used to eating raw fish," Monte says. "All except their eyes. Tahitians consider fish eyes a great delicacy, but they look at one so reproachfully I honestly hadn't the heart ! I even got so I could eat pox, and when I tell you that is a mess made out of decayed breadfruit, you can see we didn't have a lot of choice on the menu card. The fruit is gorgeous to look at but it all tastes alike — bananas, plantain, apples, melons — you can't tell the difference." But the native feasts, described so rhapsodically by the lyric Mr. O'Brien? Those charming social affairs where all sorts of delicacies are served on leaves by native belles with flashing smiles? The South Sea Islanders have inherited with other white man's vices, his addiction to tin cans. Canned salmon is their favorite fish now, the delicacy they serve their guests. And those native beauties promised faithfully by O'Brien, those innocent light hearted damsels who bathe in the shallow lagoons and dance in grass skirts, those cafe an hit ladies who win the hearts of white men away from their Helens and Gertrudes at home, what were they doing when Monte and his friends attended a feast? Here is the saddest news of all, brought back by the "White Shadows" company. There are no native beauties! There are no flashing smiles and long clouds of silken black tresses. The inhabitants of Tahiti lose their teeth early. The most coquettish smile lacks something in seduction when it discloses four front teeth missing. South Sea girls have taken to boyish bobs like the girls in the movies they see every week. The costume considered stylish by dusky flappers, a simple square of tapa cloth wrapped about the middle and tied carelessly behind, displays the figure remarkably, but — I have the word of all the men in the "White Shadows" company— there is entirely • too much figure to display. The publicity department of the Metro-Goldwyn company, working hard to earn their salaries, lists the hardships of the voyage in this lyric outburst. "To get this picture Metro sent an expedition of sixty men and women more than five thousand miles. They encountered terrific hardships, climbed mountains seven thousand feet high, braved tropical storms, lost themselves in the depths of jungles never before explored — " Stewed Cockroaches IV/JoNTE Blue, Director Van Dyke and the rest of the company have a list of harder hardships than these. Smells, squeaky tin phonographs grinding out tenyear-old tunes, cockroaches in the stew, centipedes in the beds, poor champagne at a terrific price, daytime in the South Seas, night-time in the South Seas, a mail steamer once a month, lack of barber shops. A man may climb steep mountains and swim fierce torrents without complaining, but to go around with a week-old growth of whiskers and needing a haircut takes real heroism. It should be some consolation to those who see the finished picture to remember this — after they have witnessed it. For thereby they may get a double thrill. The first will be one of delight in the beauty and romance of the setting as it appears on the screen, and a yearning some day to go there themselves, splash about in the baby-blue water of the lagoons and watch the native girls dance beneath the palms, black against the moonlight. And the second will be the consoling thought, when they reach home and have to remember about leaving a note for the milkman f.ir only one bottle tomorrow morning, that I they will not have to sleep between sodden sheets or have in the morning to make their breakfast of canned salmon, decayed breadfruit and fish eyes. 82