Hollywood Spectator (1931)

16 Hollywood Spectator woods. I care not at all whether either the Theatre Guild, Mr. Cohan, Mr. Frohman, Mr. Selwyn, Eva Le Gallienne or any of the rest of them are either theatre or art. But I am interested when the foremost commentator on matters theatrical wastes a whole page on the question. I may not care for his conclusions, but I am allowed, I hope, to wonder a little why he should be bothered with drawing them at all. ▼ ▼ This same Mr. Nathan, on a tour of inspection of the beer-gardens of Europe last year, stopped long enough in Paris to see Sous Les Toits de Pans. Among the twenty others in the theatre when he saw it, he reported himself as extremely bored. The picture came over here and gave the ragamuffin movie critics something to talk about for weeks. In a world-wide vote of movie critics, the newspaper Der Deutsche of Berlin was pleased to record the picture the first choice of a majority. After which there was more talk. Now, there are interesting conclusions to draw from this state of affairs — a stage critic whose works rank as literature— well, perhaps not necessarily rank — with nothing more red-blooded to talk about than whether his foremost art theatre is after all theatre, and a lot of movie scribblers who manage to animate words all over thousands of pages just because a little French picture in which they probably understood none of the dialogue struck their fancy. ▼ ▼ It brings to mind the days before writing slid down the rocks as a human activity into its present ocean of bad manners, morals and intellectual inappreciableness. The gusty fellows preceding this period had been writing much as an alarm clock unwinds, with no thought for the neighbors or niceties. Then came the George Moores, the Flauberts, the Arthur Symonses, the Henry Jameses, the Walter Paters, the John Adding-ton Symondses and took the lid off writing in an effort to find out what it was all about. Writing became an art, but was hardly longer writing. And when you pick up a book or a magazine to-day in which appear the outpourings of your favorite authors, you are reading the results of that introspection. So now comes the theatre. To it the motion picture always has been a dirty beggar asking for its earnings. It still is. But to our credit it may be said that only of late have we earned the opprobrium. Among the brightest beacon lights lighting us out of that theatre wallow, have been All Quiet on the Western Front, and Sous Les Toils de Paris — both received in the grand critical manner by Mr. Nathan as tripe. Barge on then, you makers of tripe. Make more. And talk about it, live it, eat it and exhume it. Only don’t stop to ask yourselves too seriously whether it really is tripe, because the minute you do you may doubt it. And doubt brings a cessation of effort. And the first thing you know you will be admitting to yourselves that it is art all right, but the question will cling — is it tripe? And then you might as well sell out to the theatre, for you will be right where Mr. Nathan places it now. T ▼ ▼ Paramount On Parade The news, just arrived via one of the Hollywood daily trade papers, that Walter Wanger is out at Paramount and that Ben Schulberg is sitting again on the throne, will doubtless be old when this edition of the Spectator goes to press. Yet it opens enough interesting avenues of speculation to make it serve for some comment. My quarrel is not with Wanger, nor yet with Schulberg. For my part, I believe both of them have shown sufficient ability to indicate that they know what pictures are about. But nothing is more certain than that as a pair of executives working in the same interests they resemble nothing so much as a team of horses, each horse pulling in an opposite direction. I hope there is no doubt in anyone’s mind how materially this has slowed down Paramount production during the past year. It so happens that I sat in a Paramount executive’s office when this news was delivered on this particular morning. The news then was still unverified. It may never be. But Paramount and the motion picture industry in general may well hope that it will be. ▼ ▼ The time was when Paramount stood undisputed leader of the industry. Then Thalberg pushed M-G-M over the top. Junior Laemmle and Darryl Zanuck also have figured as the producers of some of the best of the recent pictures. Paramount hasn’t had a first rate picture since The Love Parade— I am speaking, of course, of the box-office. The Von Sternberg pictures and Tabu and Rango have been artistic successes, but have done their share, too, to beggar the company. Those on the coast who have known him have always considered Ben Schulberg one of the first-rate minds of pictures. I have met him only once, but I have talked, from time to time, to hundreds of his employees. I have never heard him either disrespectfully or slightingly referred to unless by someone who had ten minutes before been fired by him. When they had been fired for an hour they generally returned to their high opinion of him. I do not know Walter Wanger at all. I do know that he has been responsible for fine productions emanating from the East Coast studios. I have heard him referred to generally as a likable and competent executive. But when two executives are given almost equal power, and both have ability, something is bound to happen. Paramount under either of these men will go ahead again to its proper place in the front ranks of picture makers. It has probably a majority of the talent of the world in its various plants. But under both of them, it must continue to falter on its way, aimingin two directions at once. Some of us have been surprised that a picture general as old and crafty as Adolph Zukor has not seen this before. T ▼ ▼ Eyebrows VENGALI. Two or three times while this was running, I thought I caught a glimpse of the fun that was in Trilby as its author fashioned it. But they were very brief. Still, I cherish them, for it is becoming increasingly infrequent that I recognize old favorites in their movie masquerade. There was a time when I worried about this, and called it the fault of supervisors, and adaptors, and directors: it is only lately that I have understood how much at fault an actor may be. The Barrymore penchant for doing things the Barrymore way has its advantages, but it has its drawbacks, too. If I am expected to sit up and watch Sveyigali’s eyes turn Lon Chaneywise to water for minutes on end, I object. I object also to the way Barrymore has robbed the piece of its delicious humor. A sepulchral laugh or two is there, I admit, crowded in among Machiavellian deviltries; but the whole business is so dismally carried out that I could not but wonder what the studio officialdom was doing while Du Maurier was so unmercifully being hanged. ▼ ▼ I SAW Marian Marsh for the first time in a recent Barrymore release, The Mad Genius. For some reason, which must have been a stupid one, I mixed her in my mind with someone who smiles and wears few clothes for MetroGoldwyn-Mayer. They may, for all I know, be sisters. She