Canadian Film Weekly (May 24, 1944)

Page 6 Canadian FILM WEEKLY May 24, 1944 *...Che Most Unkindest Cut of A 0° Commons Member Offers Stars Slaps for Kisses to Canada (Continued from Page 1) IIsley Answers Sinclair showed strange carelessness for a solon. He had not checked up to see whether he was right or wrong before attempting to guard airmen's leaves or sneering at movie stars, The Hon. Cyrus MacMillan, Parliamentary Assistant to the Minister of National Defence for Air, pointed out that an airman's regular leave is extended by the length of time given to extra services. Strike one. The Hon. J. L. Isley, Minister of Finance, who knows Victory Loan problems better than any other person in Canada, delivered strike two. According to Hansard: Hon. J. L. ILSLEY: “May I just say one word about actors and actresses? The impression given in the paper was that these ladies and gentlemen receive pay for their services in Canada. That is not the case. They give their services free, and’so far as my experlence goes they are more than anxious to assist the war effort.” Mr. SINCLAIR: should.” Mr. ILSLEY: “I deplore any remarks that depreciate their services, because they are voluntarlly given, in a way in which they can best help the war effort of the unifed nations.” “so They Should” [NS8THAD of a gracious apology ’ Mr. Sinclair delivered a petulant “So they should.” “So they So they should. So should everyone. Actors and actresses do enthusiastically. Mr. Sinclair had no right to penalize people who are whole-hearted in thelr war effort for what he considers the indifference of a public that needs stimulation. That very popularity with the public which makes the services of actors and actresses valuable is their undoing at the hands of Mr. Sinclair, Are there no people in other callings who are more deserving of Mr. Sinclair's critical attention? There are—but they are not public figures. Had not Mr. Sinclair, as a Member of Parliament, been a public figure his words would have received the quick death such sound and fury deserves, instead of space in the press. Mr. Sinclair would have been much fairer had he made no distinction between divorced actors and actresses and divorced street car conductors and conductoresses. Or between “painted” actresses and “painted” welfare workers. It is likely that the actresses have the superior and less obvious “painting” job. Let the “painted” ladies who share our homes, factories and war services take it from there. Mr. Sinclair used people as his horrible example who, if service invites tolerance, might have been spared his opinions of marriage and makeup. It must be discouraging to private citizens in a private enterprise who come to a country not their own to serve the national welfare and the cause of the United Nations. They come as an example of the unity of the United Nations, our common cause and the friendship between the United States and Canada. And they must turn the other cheek every time they expose themselves to the short-sighted. Mr. Sinclair is certainly no realist in this matter. The game must be won according to the conditions as they exist, not as they should be. Conditions as they should be are a long way off. If those taxed with the responsibility of getting the most out of the war effort think they need the help of movie stars, you can wager that they are right and Mr. Sinclair is wrong. Should movie stars suffer because they answer the call? Does He Know? be ations three is Mr, Sinclair’s remark about screen stars who “fight their battles on the screen or in the divorce courts,” The late Secretary of the Navy for the USA publicly thanked Hollywood for its “unstinting assistance in the sale of war bonds, the entertainment of the armed forces and other important contributions.” He was but one of many charged with the conduct of the war who has done that. Had Mr. Sinclair been an observant movie-goer he would have noticed that many male stars haye disappeared from the screen, among them Jimmy Stewart, Clark Gable, Robert Montgomery, Douglas Fairbanks; Victor Mature, Melvyn Douglas, Tyrone Power and Van Heflin. They are but a fraction of feature players who are in the services. Some enlisted shortly after their country went to war. Douglas Montgomery enlisted in the Canadian army before the USA entered the fray, as did other players not so well known. David Niven and Richard Greene returned to England to enlist. Several stars have won decorations, Hollywood actors and actresses are taking their chances every day on the war fronts. Bob Hope, Al Jolson and many others have made a number of tours. Paulette Goddard, William Gargan and Keenan Wynn just missed being blown up by a land mine in Burma. The weight of their jeep would have exploded it but fortunately a soldier walking just ahead stumbled on it. Goddard, one of Mr. Sinclair’s “painted” actresses, just completed a 38,000 mile tour. According to Time Magazine, she ‘washed herself in leftover tea” in Burma, where she was honored by General Stilwell. There is no room here to detail the work of Hollywood stars in the theatres of action. The records are available, for there is a talent pool of 1,000 artists working through the Hollywood Victory Committee. Quite a number of stars with overseas’ experience have visited Canada. As For Divorce [2° C. ROSTEN, recently a 4 Washington official, wrote a statistical and analytical book called “Hollywood” in which, in @ chapter called “Eros in Hollywood,” he studied the matter of divorce. Rosten, explaining that it was Impossible to strike comparative figures between Hollywood and the rest of the USA because of general lack of statistics, agreed that Hollywood probably had more divorces. . ., He also agreed that the differ ence was greatly exaggerated. “A banker or a merchant can dine and dance with a goodly number of attractive females without precipitating an international furor,” he wrote, “but when a movie celebrity attends a fully chaperoned party with the wife of a cousin from Seattle, that epochal event is recorded, interpreted, embellished and splashed across the print and rotogravure pages of the world.” And Hollywood shares the guilt, “The public philosophy of Hollywood has long rested on the premise that almost any news is good news. Keeping a name before the public is the first goal of ballyhoo; the contexts in which the name appears are a secondary consideration.” What causes Hollywood divorces? “The subordination of one’s own interest to the demands of another is seldom easy;” Rosten writes, “it is impossible when both husband and wife are making demands. The Hollywood husband fears that he will become the appendage of a glamor girl; the wife sees her own career dimmed by the brilliance of her husband’s . . . The movie wives who have professional careers retain their own names and their own careers after marriage, and this reaffirms the psychological autonomy which actors bring into the state of marriage.” Rosten says that “it is a grave mistake to assume that Hollywood’s people marry cynically. If they were really cynical, or indifferent to the moral power of matrimony, why should they marry at all? ... To the movie star no less than the waitress or the shoe clerk, marriage is a mysterious panacea for inner misery.” It seems that divorce in Hollywood is an indigenous natural phenomenon. To do away with it a federal law imposing celibacy would have to be passed. How much worse are actors and actresses than other groups? Rosten’s conclusion in 1941 was that 24.5 per cent of all professional groups in the movie colony have probably been divorced. Stouffer and Spencer, in the American Journal of Sociology, estimated that in 1935 there were 16.4 divorces per hundred marriages, These were between people who were without the marriage handicaps faced by actors and actresses. It would have been much more to Mr. Sinclair’s credit had he checked up on the service of Hollywood stars to the war effort and thought a little about divorce, an accepted fact, judging by the Jaw lists in our newspapers, before delivering such a slap in so high a place.