The Film Spectator (Mar-Dec 1928)

April 28, 1928 THE FILM SPECTATOR Page Three THE FILM SPECTATOR EVERY OTHER SATURDAY Published by FILM SPECTATOR, INCORPORATED Welford Beaton, President and Editor Editorial Office: 7213 Sunset Boulevard HEmpstead 2801 Advertising and Circulation Departments: 411 Palmer Building Gladstone 5506 Subscription price, $5.00 per year; foreign, $6.00. Single copy, 20 cents. He that wrestles with us strengthens our nerves sharpens our skill. — Burke. HOLLYWOOD, CALIFORNIA, APRIL 28, 1928 A LETTER Mr. John Barrymore, United Artists Studio. My dear Jack: Here are some facta: You are credited with being the greatest living Hamlet. You now are making motion pictures. Sound photography has been developed sufficiently to make the talking picture satisfactory screen entertainment. Technicolor has made it possible to reproduce on the screen the exact shade of any colored object. No person could be sufficiently stupid to deny that the only perfect picture must contain both sound and color. The screen is rushing swiftly towards them, and in a very short time the silent, black and white picture will be a thing of the past. You are offered an opportunity to write your name imperishably in the history of motion pictures. You can be a pioneer in sound and color by putting both into a picture that will command the instant attention of the world as no picture containing either yet has done. Do Hamlet in Technicolor and reproduce the lines in Movietone, or by any other sound device that would do justice to your own magnificent voice and to the voices of the excellent artists with whom you would surround yourself. There are enough trained players in Hollywood to make casting easy. No man can become the great artist that you are without being under definite obligation to his art. No man can be hailed as great by the people of two continents without owing something to those people. It is your duty to perpetuate your Hamlet. The choice is not yours. Before we had sound and color you had some excuse for not trying to film the great Shakespearean story, but with the advent of these aids to realization any excuse was made impossible. Your art is calling you. And you should not overlook the fact that such a picture would make several million dollars. That makes Art's voice even stronger. — W. B. * * * Sound Devices to Cause a Revolution in Pictures THE new Warner Brothers theatre, which opens this week, is going to write screen history. The first picture it shows, Glorious Betsy, will give you just a hint of what sound is going to mean to the screen, and the second. The Lion and the Mouse, will turn the industry upside down and make every other picture, including those not yet released, old-fashioned. In sound we have something over which producers have no control. After The Lion and the Mouse is released generally and shown in the five hundred theatres already outfitted for Vitaphone, we will have no more important silent pictures. They will be as dead as the dodo. The industry will have to readjust itself violently. In every studio there are in the THE CHARM OF MYSTERY By GEORGE F. MAGOFFIN Dear Mr. Beaton: While "The Charm of Mystery" may seem to have little bearing on pictures, a moment's thought will show it to be peculiarly apposite and in accord with your own contentions. The charm of a woodland pool, a woman's eyes or a picture is in large degree owing to their power of stimulating the imagination. Divest the pool of its sylvan setting and it becomes a puddle. Present a sentimental emotion in the blatant glare of a close-up and you rob it of all the glamour which the mind may conceive: nothing is left to hang a fancy on. And fancies are woven from the intangible stuff of moon beams, not the uncompromising beam of a spotlight, revealing all too clearly the mascara and lipstick, when we would imagine the virginal freshness of dawn or the countenance of age, hallowed by memories. A great picture is analogous to the shadowy pool or eyes in whose deeps repose enigmas; for it allures the fancy to wander in the domain of Mystery — whose other name is Romance. G. F. M. Her eyes . . . love-kissed, tender — Twin pools in a bosky dell. And your parched throat! Remember? This . . . and, too, the joy Clear pools in sylvan shade impart. Or eyes that hold deep mysteries — Clear pools — a very part themselves With witchery and sprites and elves. 0 these . . . That conjure fancies of unthought delights, Those minor tones of love — more sensed than heard That weave o'er hearts a tapestry of light: For these there's not — nor need be — any word. And lovely eyes have subtileties all their own. What need have they their inner thoughts to tell If in their deeps repose the mystery Of life and love? Ah, these . . . The things we can not understand, but feel Sometimes when gazing deep in pools, Or eyes, that have the charm Of mystery.