Picture Play Magazine (Mar-Jul 1929)

54 * NrOT far from Hollywood is a pretty, little country club called Patton. Patton is the permanent home of people who think they are Napoleon, Duse, Gaby Deslys, certain biblical characters, and talkirtg-picture actors, directors, and producers, to say nothing of the increasing clique of what is called, for lack of a modern Webster to supply a better word, the "buzzers"— people who have seen too many talkies. There are jumping beans in Mexico. Why not talkie nuts in America? Recently they took some of the less harmless inmates to San Bernardino to a talking picture. One man forgot he was Napoleon and became a talking picture. He was in a cell the day I visited the asylum. The guard pointed him out to me. He was as badly dressed as a comedy director ; his hair was as disheveled as the leading man's, just after a fight scene; and in his eyes was a strange glint — that same childlike, irresponsible gleam you see in a producer's eye when he has just succeeded in appropriating somebody's idea without getting caught. "Watch him now," the guard whispered to me. "He's going to start the next performance." Suddenly the man leaped up. He started rubbing the wall with a piece of sandpaper, and humming a strange tune. He began talking in a monotone. He had memorized a dialogue short-subject by seeing it once. With a dart, he grabbed a piece of an old shirt from a table and tore it across. "That's a big emotional scene," the guard breathed in my ear. "He's tearing his hair." The "Talking Picture" moaned softly, "It's three o'clock in the morning " and slammed a plate on the table. It was shattered into bits. "The break of day," said the guard. The monologue was resumed. The Talking Picture changed the sandpaper to his shoe, and continued scratching the wall with it. He had a special strap for this. He grasped a coffee grinder and started turning it slowly. I looked at the guard. He enlightened me. "That's the mills An inmate of an asylum quit being Napoleon after seeing his first talkie, and now imitates the sounds he heard. gods grinding," he of the said. Talking Picture rasped on in a painful monologue. He dropped a book on the table. "The fall of evening," I suggested. The guard looked at me searchingly. He must have been wondering if it was safe to leave me at large. "How'd you know?" he barked menacingly. I laughed my most guileless chuckle, and peered through the bars again. Talking Picture took a loud Christmas necktie and hacked it with an ax. The guard decided to pass over my earlier break and whispered, "Cutting the home ties." I shook my head sadly. Here was genius going to waste. Now he had a big, rubber eraser. He was rubbing the table. The sandpaper was going faster than ever in a climacteric frenzy. "It's almost the fade-out," said the guard. "That's time erasing all sorrow."' My heart was heavy as I tiptoed away. As we went down the corridor I heard a curious, tenor wail from Talking Picture. "What's that?" I shivered. "He's trying to reach high C. He's synchronizing 'The Sea Beast.' I been trying to get him to work on 'Underworld.' He has a bass voice. "We got to give him all those props, or he'll raise a rumpus and disturb Napoleon, who's next door to him." "I thought you said Talking Picture used to be Napoleon. Then you have another Napoleon?" "Another?" scoffed "Eleven of 'em. One missed." "Did you ever work around pictures?" I asked the guard. "Sure," he grinned. "That's why I got this job. I used to be an assistant director for Warner Brothers." Harold B. Franklin, the astute general manager of West Coast Theaters, recently made a shrewd bargain with Charlie Murray, the comedian. Business at Loew's State Theater in Los Angeles hadn't been so good. At that it was averaging around $24,000 weekly, with $28,000 the high mark for some three months. Franklin induced Murray to be in the prologue for a week. Murray gets somewhere around $3,000 a week in pictures, but Franklin talked him into accepting $1,500, plus half of all the the guard, is never