Hollywood Spectator (February 29, 1936)

i Al Hollywood Spectator eee that he has kept the heart of a chicken alive in a flask for years and years) that we learned what a menace movies have become to the body as well. We quote: “Each man is characterized by his figure, his way of carrying himself, the aspect of his face. Our outward form expresses the qualities, the powers, of our body and our mind. In a given race, it varies according to the mode of life of the individuals. The man of the Renaissance, whose life was a constant fight, who was exposed continuously to dangers and inclemencies, who was capable of as great an enthusiasm for the discoveries of Galileo as for the masterpieces of Leonardo da Vinci or Michelangelo, did not resemble modern man who lives in a steam-heated apartment, an air-conditioned office, a closed car, who contemplates absurd films.... We begin to observe the new types created by motor cars, cinemas, and athletics. Some, more frequent in Latin countries, are characterized by an adipose aspect, flabby tissues, discolored skin, protruding abdomen, thin legs, awkward posture, unintelligent and brutal face. Others appear, especially among Anglo-Saxons, and show broad shoulders, narrow waist, and bird-like cranium.” This is indeed a most alarming state of affairs. It would be well, in fact one might say imperative, for the producers to take heed and raise the quality of their pictures. “The masses may deteriorate through watching “absurd films,” but this would not interfere with their paying for the privilege; the imminent danger to the film industry lies in the possibility that peoples’ bodies may degenerate through viewing bad pictures to the point where they will be unable to drag themselves to the theatres at all. Frankenstein would be annihilated by the monster of his own creation, and even the SprecTraToR would not survive. *% % * A gentleman by the name of Charles Morgan, London correspondent for the New York Times, speaks most frankly and rather alarmingly in an article dated December 27. He explodes a small yet portentious bombshell. I know nothing of Mr. Morgan, yet his article awakened a great curiosity in me as to just what he is like. He begins his piece with a mention of Paul Bourget and his recent death and circuitously, as he admits himself, starts to discuss a play by Barrie, Peter Pan. When speaking of Bourget he mentions the three greatest novels he wrote and the remarkable deterioration in his work after they had been written, and speaks of how English criticism and French criticism differ, the English treating an author’s later works with leniency and respect for the “glorious past,’’ while the French criticism is unsparing and relentless. He also speaks of how England piously respects its idols and defends them. Then he mentions Peter Pan, the deified lost boy, the English institution. I quote: “Therefore I say at my peril—and should not say it in these terms if the Atlantic were not comfortably wide—that to me Peter Pan is an intensely embarrassing play.” Later he says, “His ideal existence is to loiter in perpetual boyhood, refusing growth, rejecting the processes of nature, and, while fixed in his determination to be no-one’s father, yearning for his irretrievable mother. That is why the play to me is embarrassing and Page Fifteen perverse. It exalts as an ideal a flat refusal of life itself. It colors with false rainbows and depicts in the line of swaggering courage what is in truth a black, timorous negativism.” And he finishes with, “If we ask why the English have taken to their hearts, as if it were true and beautiful, such an ugly piece of sentimentalism, the answer is twofold: first that Puritanism has suppressed but not destroyed a yearning for a female goddess; secondly, that Barrie’s special glorification of sexual shrinking and timidity is pecularly satisfying to the conventional English mind.” Mr. Morgan phrases his thoughts briefly and concisely. They mirror a man who feels he is definitely and finally in the right. That in parading his literal mind before his readers he might come in for criticism and a fair amount of righteous anger, he seems perfectly aware. One cannot help but admire his courage. But, strangely enough, Mr. Morgan aroused no resentment. His article did not incense or irritate me. It made me wonder. If I reacted at all after reading his piece, it was in the calm sure way that a missionary lady might react when, looking over a list of prospects, she finds a heathen worthy of converting into a believer. Not that I feel like converting Mr. Morgan, nor that I could or would want to. He would have nothing to lose. I would—a wealth of half-forgotten folk-lore, fairy stories, rainstorms, great winds, the unexplored, the mysterious, a nice scent, a very hot day, the great and comforting sense that anything can happen and might, the uncertain realm where recaptured fact leaves off and imagination steps in. I could argue, and argue well, in defense of Peter Pan and all he means to me and to thousands of others. But, somehow, I’d rather keep his memory intact, away from disturbing factors, away from Mr. Morgan, away from the black and white print on a paper. He’s become a part of me, a smile on my face, a thought flashing through my mind. I was never one to parade my emotions. Let the literary, detectives turn their Freudian lenses upon themselves, and leave a little girl her dreams. Don’t overlook reading about the SpecTator’s Tenth Birthday Party. Page. 2. HOLLYWOOD SPECTATOR 6513 Hollywood Boulevard Hollywood, California Enclosed. is my check for Five Dollars, for which send HOLLYWOOD SPECTATOR for one year from date, to Name Address Please write name and address plainly —we ewww ew www ew we wm em ewe ew Ks