Picture Play Magazine (Jul - Dec 1929)

58 Tke Stroller Penetrating observations on random happenings in the movie colony. B? Neville Rea? Illustrated by Lui Trugo THE residents of Sound Trackia may sit back and chortle over a Mexican revolution a few hundred miles away — but their own revolution is taken seriously to heart. There is this about their own little tempest. The alleged City of Sin takes it all very seriously, and like Rome, has its song writers from New York composing scores of scores, as it were, with Neronic abandon to accompany into oblivion the cortege of sad-faced actors who, though alive, are dead. The old regime is passing. Mortgages are being foreclosed, imported cars are being surrendered to their rightful owners, the finance companies — when they can find the cars — and high-salaried valets and Japanese gardeners are feeling the pinch. Some of what we call the preceding generation have grown upstage to prove they are not hurt, while a few have dropped their former pose for the newer and more difficult one of being the hail fellow. • As a whole it is a pleasant spectacle — one which in the Coliseum probably would have drawn the Roman gesture of thumbs down. Had there been real fighting by the writers, actors, and directors of the silent screen as a body, they would be deserving of sympathy. Those who have fought, strangely enough, have repulsed, at least temporarily, the onslaught of dramaturgists, footlight favorites, and stage directors. And many, once submerged in the silent drama, have shrieked for recognition and gained it — to wit, William Powell, Warner Baxter, Bessie Love, and a few others. On the other hand, most of the noteworthy performances in the new art have been given by players from the stage — players, who in one picture, have gained a greater public following than a screen player ever was able to accumulate with a series of six silent successes. Months ago the outposts on the Western front fell before the verbiage from the East neatly aimed at Hollywood, at about the corner of Sunset and Western, whence it scattered on the pavement and ricocheted with an alarming whine westward, splashing into the Pacific Ocean, after ping off a few scenario stragglers en route. The front-line trenches have been High-salaried valets and Japanese gardeners are feeling the pinch following the "revolution" in Hollywood. surrendered, the retreat has become disorderly. The Yon Stroheim line has fallen, and now the cry echoes along New York's Great White Way, "Unconditional surrender, or we'll talk you to death." Louis B. Mayer has capitulated, and to prove his right to the Turkish ambassadorship, should he get it, is said to be preparing an armistice contract, and to be framing, with diplomatic finesse, the fourteen points under which Hollywood will be evacuated. Latest reports are that New York offered to accede to but one point — that a poorhouse be endowed to shelter indigent actors, writers, and directors, with the proviso that the inmates must not be harrassed by words, but must communicate in pantomime only. The few angry survivors, who have been hiding out in cellars, are reported to have come up for air one day, and to have seen the new legion marching over the Hollywood hills with colors flying. One of the disgruntled group, a member of the extinct species, Comedias Constructorianus, muttered the derogatory wheeze, "Not a gag in a carload." Esprit de corps is unknown to the defenders. It's a rout, with every man for himself, and a lot of guerilla warfare going on behind the lines. It is not a pleasant sight to some. Others, however, figure that Chicago benefits by gang wars which only kill off people the police should "gedunk" anyway. So why not Hollywood ? The novelty of the thing is that two armies are battling, but the kings don't care. The producers want one army, and they don't care who's in it. They'll end up with a polyglot thing, and continue to get richer. When certain of our well-known — and may I say esteemed ? — actors are referred to as having their intellects sorely tried by talking pictures, I believe I know what is meant. The old dogs can scarcely find the ability to jump through the directorial hoop which demands memorizing words, sentences, paragraphs. Going to school all over? Some of them have even reverted to their days of the slate. I witnessed a rather pathetic spectacle of a famous and highly talented star — by name Jack Mulhall — trying to recite "The Charge of the Light Brigade." William Beaudine, who was directing,