The Film Spectator (Mar-Dec 1928)

December 1, 1928 THE FILM SPECTATOR Page Thirteen some producer think he will be taking a chance because they are "religious"? But who can they offend? If the preachers, then the preachers do not believe their own Book. And if the public — then the fault will not be with the stories, but with the way they are produced. * * * SAFARI, a Saga of the African Blue, by Mr. Martin Johnson (G. P. Putnam & Sons) I stopped reading when I came to the place where Mr. Johnson tells how he and Mrs. Johnson are going to remain for the rest of their lives in Africa beside a lake of ultramarine blue called "Paradise". There was a picture of the lake. You can call it jealousy if you like. Anyhow, it's much easier to see Mr. Johnson's pictures, with pretty Mrs. Johnson in them, than it is to read his prose. * t * CE. Scoggins' White Fox (BobbsMerrill Co.) is another of his Saturday Evening Post stories got out * in book form for those who care to keep him permanently on the shelf. I number myself among these. * * * THERE is something about a young man setting out to seek his fortune that stirs even the most unromantic heart. I never fail to thrill at it. If I am seeing such a young man off, I want to slip onto his train or into his boat-berth and remain there all unknown to conductors or deck hands until we are too far from our starting point for them to throw me off. I want to forget all about duties and cares and all the homely, everyday things that hold me in bondage, and just start out again-— another young man seeking his fortune, a light heart his only asset. And yet, of course, I never do. And I never do because of a number of good and sufficient reasons. In my nonnage it was the custom among my schoolboy friends of the great Northwoods country (an almost obligatory custom) for the lads who were considered worth their salt to dare all and leave all and set out for fame and fortune about the time evolution and a rather healthy growth pushed us from knickers into long pants. And so I suppose I wore out that fortune-seeking lust before the average young man of today has graduated from fractions to long division. At any rate, the tender age of thirteen found me lying on my back looking up at very cold and very distant stars, while under me rumbled and shook and crashed the slow midnight freight northward bound from Seattle. That was a thrill! What visions I had! What dreams I dreamed! But after a while the visions and the dreams passed, and sleep which I had learned for thirteen years to expect every night, didn't come. Instead, came qualms, and wonderings, and bone-shaking cold. What would my mother think? Why hadn't I told her? Why hadn't I asked for a little money? But I won't go into all that. Centuries later it was dawn, and the now quite horrible and horrifying freight pulled into the little town of Everett, thirty miles from home. Somehow I made my way back, but it was the first olive out of the bottle and the rest came easy. That summer it was Yakima and fruit-picking, and the next Pressor and the high Horseheaven country. After that, Kansas, Washington, D. C, Alaska. Fortune was always in the place I wasn't, always just lying over the next hill. » * * WHAT an old story that is. Older than this nation. Old as the race itself. Centuries ago, barbarian tribes sent their youths to Babylon, then Egypt, then Athens, then Rome, then Oxford and the Sorbonne — now London, Paris, New York, Hollywood! And what a false siren is that lure. How bloated with rich young blood which, left to its natural habitat, might have flowed naturally into productive activity, a fireside, children, wise old age. All the centuries that have gone before teach that lesson. All the writers, all the painters, all the poets who ever wrote or painted or poetized anything worth while, began at home — and usually stayed there. Byron, Shelley, Keats, Wilde, have a lesson for anyone with eyes to see. Manet, had he lived there, could have painted the back fences of Watts as beautifully as any of his pictures of his beloved France. Emerson's adage about the world coming to your door-step for your better mouse-trap is so true, so axiomatic, that everyone but youth knows it, has learned it long years ago through the hard trials of experience. * * * • BUT there he goes, that young man, off for Mexico City, for Trinidad, for London, for Constantinople! The quick step, the light heart, the devil-may-care look in the eye — you can mark him in every city in every land. He is courting trouble, but doesn't care, because he doesn't know it. He will suffer, but isn't afraid, because he has never suffered. He is on the boat now, the so conspicuously foreign boat he has wanted you to see. He points with his stick (ah, that stick — how much it reveals!) to the sign over the companionway and shows you his knowledge of the language by repeating it. "Passajeros." He sees a little group of women get on and whispers, "Female Passajeros!" You are introduced in turn to "row-boatas", "ropa", "masto", "deck chairos" until your sides shake with laughter. Then it is goodbye — "Buenos dias!" and you are standing on the dock and the boat is gone. Oh, young man — oh, all brave young men — there are so many things we wish we could tell you. But maybe it's better that we can't. * * * LIKE many another American of hardy English-ScotchIrish-German-French-Basque descent, I am very fond of the dish known to the Menu Writer's Guild as Prime Roast Ribs of Beef au jus. On a recent journey to Hollywood in search of this specialty among the touted restaurants there, I happened, quite unfortunately, to enter one of the most celebrated of these establishments at a very inopportune time. For on either side of me, where I finally obtained a seat, were men I quickly recognized as motion picture actors. And very poor ones at that — actors who don't so much as get their names mentioned in the front pages of this periodical once in a twelvemonth. Now, it has been my habit, insofar as I have found that practicable, to avoid a certain type of actor. And these men were that type. And it wasn't long before I was wishing devoutly that I had chosen a different time to visit that particular restaurant, or that I had gone instead to some other restaurant far removed from Hollywood. For one of these actors, and one of the waiters, had become involved in a highly colored conversation about another actor's wife. With many a low tone and quick side-glance to make sure that no one could possibly overhear them — evidently forgetting that I sat a scant six inches from the actor's elbow — they proceeded to tear this poor woman's reputation to shreds. In the space of five minutes I had the unpleasant experience of having every one of my sensibilities shocked, and my appetite completely spoiled. In strict justice, I suppose, it was none of my business what that actor said; and this department isn't very much concerned with actors, anyway. But let not that waiter think — as George Bernard Shaw said of the little girl in Wales who didn't recognize him — let not that waiter think he will get my photogi-aph tJiat way! » » * WORDS measured into septameters, heptameters and tetrameters of iambic, trochaic and anapaestic verse, do not always make poetry, as better poets than Stephen Vincent Benet have learned before now. But — sometimes they make a corking good story, as this same S. V. Benet has proved with his John Brown's Body (Doubleday-Doran). And yet, there are flashes where Benet the poet quite supersedes Ben^t the novelist and spinner of tales. ... American muse, zvhosc strong and diverse hcari So many men have tried to understand But only made it smaller tc'i//> tlieir art. Because you are as various as your land .... he begins his theme; and then tells why he is qualified to measure himself against it: Tlih flesh was seeded from no foreign grain But Pennsyhania and Kentucky tti/iraf. And it has soaked in California rain And five years tempered in Xcu' England sleet. The almost heroic story that follows this invocation to his muse is something new in the history of American