Amateur Movie Makers (Dec 1926-Dec 1927)

HOLLYWOOD Films Its Children By Myrtle Gebhart THE big stars of Hollywood are busy making films of their kiddies. Yearly records of the tots are made as they grow up, and are kept in the family movie album. Some day, doubtless, some of these children will be famous themselves, and we may then be allowed a glimpse of these "secret" films. Toward the future I turn an ear and methinks I hear the following dialogue, occurring about the year 1940, the scene being the magnificent projection salon in the sumptuous home of the Harold Lloyds : "We-11." father Harold, grown plump with prosperity and mayhap a little bald, yawns and remarks, "we've just seen the latest Famous-Goldmayer Super-Special-Extra-Jewel $10,000,000 production. The programme's over, the announcer says. Let's put on one of the films we took of you, Gloria, when you were a tiny tot." "Oh, dad. don't," Gloria exclaims in irritation. "The notions fathers get these days. That antique thing ! Why, there's one you made when I was only six months old . . . and, dad, I didn't have very much on. Besides, mother's clothes look so dowdy. All the hair the women had then — they called it 'bobbed,' didn't they, mother? It must have been a lot of bother. So much nicer." Gloria purrs, "to merely brush back our ultrashort-cuts the way we do now with a slap-bang." Against Gloria's objection, however, father Harold presses a button. With the scenes that now flash on the screen before them there are no words, such as accompanied the motion picture of a moment before, broadcast from a central projecting station into thousands of homes, its dialogue synchronized to the action so expertly that the voices emanated perfectly cadenced, from the lips of the shadow actors. No, this poor little reel is a memory-glance bringing vividly back before them the life of 1926 ... a film record of Mildred Gloria Lloyd's babyhood. I'll wager this very scheme will occur, with many duplicates in many homes of former movie actors— probably producers or business magnates of the mammoth motion picture industry or else retired from active work, living luxuriously upon vast estates — in 1940 or thereabouts. Or perhaps a loved little one will be gone and the film of her babyhood will keep her not only enshrined in their hearts, but there at will, in her shadowed reflection, before their eyes. For the majority of the actors who are parents are keeping a film record of their young ones' childhood, of their games and studies, their growth from year to year. I wonder how the kiddies will like it? It would be interesting, I'll admit, to see chubby, cottonhaired me toddling around on plump little legs. Still. I don't know. Some of these babypictures I'm not keen about displaying. And I've noticed strong men of the movies blush nervously when proud mothers would insist upon showing the interviewer how Thomas looked as an infant wrapped in a dimple and .... well, very little else. I believe the idea, over which Hollywood's parents are so enthusiastic now, isn't going to prove a great hit when the baby actors are grown up and these childhood celluloids are flashed on the screen. For the present, however, the kiddies are having great fun playing in home movies under the direction of their actor-parents, and in making their own little films with the vest-pocket sized cameras given them to imprint for future reference their youthful activities. The children of Hollywood don't have to set "outposts" to watch for intruding parents while they indulge in their favorite game. No cry of "Jiggers, dad's coming be quiet!" stops their excitement. For they have been given as their toy the machine which has put Hollywood on the map with a blaring of trumpets, and which earns their fathers' livelihood : the camera. These family productions are simply made, without the manifold hubbub of a studio, the audience consisting of neighborhood children, who assemble to watch the proceedings and make remarks, sometimes flattering, again derisive. (Over) Bob Talmadge Keaton Courtesy of the Boston Sunday Post. Twenty -seven