Hollywood Spectator (1931)

IX Hollywood Spectator Introducing BENEDICT Portrait Illustrations It will interest the public to know one may now obtain an exquisite handdrawn portrait by t h o prominent Hollywood artist, C. Garfield Tracy, without having to submit to more than one sitting. Proofs are shown thus enabling one to select the desired position and expression to be used in making the finished portrait. Special prices for a limited time. Originals $25.00 and up Reproductions 4x5 — $15.00 dozen 8x10 — $25.00 dozen HEN EDICT F=> O R T R A I T S HOLLYWOOII 6912 Hollywood Boulevard GL adstone 3324 Opposite Chinese Theatre Hotel Mark Twain In the Heart of Hollywood 1622 No. Wilcox Avenue Weekly and Monthly Rates, at Moderate Prices Baths or Showers in Every Room J. W. THOMSON, Prop. Telephone: HE. 2111 Norman's ART SHOP The Home of Harmonic Framing Paintings Restored and Refinished 6653 Hollywood Boulevard Visitors Welcome mount lot could have imagined that such a theme would be received favorably is past comprehension. ▼ ▼ Ralph Bellamy, an upstanding actor with an ingratiating personality that will earn him the instant comradeship of any audience, loses his eyesight when the French actress whose memory he has worshipped for thirteen years, comes to his town to play Camille. Stuart Erwin, always a dependable and excellent actor, is the only one in the cast who feels sorry for him. The others use the poor fellow’s tragedy as an excuse for a series of outrageous actions which they seem to think are funny. They reveal themselves as vile creatures, and the picture makes an attempt to present their vileness as entertainment. In what I suppose was considered by Paramount as one of the great moments of the production, Ruth Chatterton makes the pathetic war hero helplessly drunk. A noble spectacle indeed ! What difference does it make if the performances in such a picture are good and if it has had most capable direction? Bellamy proves himself an admirable actor and Erwin strikes a sympathetic note, but I wouldn’t like the rest even if they were good. Ruth Chatterton’s role is the worst ever handed to her, and it was beyond her powers to make it acceptable. The script was written by Samuel Raphaelson and Vincent Lawrence, and if we may judge by what it reveals, they will be out of a job when Paramount begins to make motion pictures again. Magnificent Lie does not resemble a motion picture even remotely. It talks its way every inch across the screen. That is another thing that made me mad. I hope Paramount loses so much money on this pitiable exhibition that it never will commit a like offense. Dull Huckleberry PARAMOUNT lifted too many incidents and not enough humor from Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn and made an exceedingly dull picture. In the book there are a score or more motion pictures, and an effort was made to squeeze all of them into one. All the children who made Tom Sawyer such a successful picture are assembled in H uckleberry Finn, and the result would indicate that Paramount was under the impression that it could make a motion picture out of children and not by the intelligent direction of a good script. Norman Taurog, who made such a beautiful job of Skippy, never had a chance with Huckleberry, as he obviously was handed a scenario out of which it was impossible to make a good picture. Children can’t talk a motion picture. They have to act it if it is to be entertaining. We are not interested in what children say, but we can become interested in what they are doing. Taurog seems to have grasped this when he made Skippy, and John Cromwell certainly had it in mind when he gave us the beautifully directed Tom Sawyer; but the writers of the Huckleberry Finn script thought that all the public wants is to hear dialogue. How anyone could have read the script and figured that the picture had even a slight chance of success is one of those puzzles that make the film industry so baffling. The camera is disregarded entirely as the story-telling medium; there is no evidence of a sense of humor having had contact