Hollywood Spectator (1931)

18 Hollywood Spectator Another Innocent Sees Things Abroad By Frank Tuttle Perhaps I am taking advantage of Frank Tuttle, but if he did not wish me to publish the following personal letter, he should not have made it so interesting. He writes from Budapest. — W. B. ear Welford: Since that dim, distant moment when I promised to mail you a sheaf of European impressions much water has flowed under the bridges, and many other things have flowed under my bridge-work. We’re in Budapest. Beneath the windows of our room in the Dunapalota the Beautiful Blue Danube (perversely tawny as a puma) idles along in majestic waltz time — for in the street cafe below whoever is directing this picture has tactfully supplied a sound tract by Strauss. Occasionally the mood is broken by an interlude of jazz, but we must forgive this apparent profanation. The musicians are merely thinking of Paul Lukas and the Vajda boys. They are playing, “Loafer, come back to me!” In another two hours we shall have finished a leisurely and celestial dinner; a car will take us to the lovely Island of St. Marguerite and the Parisian Grill, where the waiters wear full evening dress, the gigolos dinner jackets and the cash customers what have you. Here the acts of the cabaret will be introduced by Leni, a seductive Hungarian blonde (she may be German) dressed a la Dietrich in the Blue Angel (dress suit sequence), and the trap-drummer will react with a wide and wicked eye to the name of Bob Armstrong. (They were here last winter.) ▼ ▼ From this you can readily see that when the local Lukas fans whisper naively of Hollywood, I laugh quietly in my beard (and if you think that’s a rib, you should see the thing — a bit subtle perhaps, but certainly a fine promise of becoming a noble replica of its inspiration — the English hedge) . That brings us quite deftly to the beginning of the trip. England was everything you said it would be. It deserves volumes, but Germany and Russia are screaming for space, so one British anecdote will have to do. We (The Oliver Garretts were my better half in London) stayed at Miss Fay Compton’s charming house in Hampstead. Her driver, a sturdy Britisher named John Shackleton, was helping us to explore. (What’s in a name, indeed!) “This,” said he, “is Berkeley Square.” And he distinctly pronounced the first syllable to rhyme with jerk. “But,” Oliver and I exploded in perfect synk, “we thought you called it ‘Barkly’.” “We do,” replied the intrepid Shackleton, “but I was afraid you wouldn’t understand.” Now I think it should be clear to every American why the sun never sets on British possessions. ▼ ▼In Germany I spent a day at Ufa with Mr. Erich Pommer, who is as cordial and gracious as ever, and the busiest producer you ever did see. They have the unit system at Ufa— that is the supervisor, director and writer work together with practically no front office interference. Nearly every picture is made in three languages, and the three versions are photographed, so to speak, simultaneously. In other words they shoot a scene in German, then the French actors step in and they shoot it in French; then finally they take it in English with another change of cast. The picture I watched them making boasted a leading lady (an English girl named Harvey) who worked in all three languages. The usual shooting schedule for one of these three-in-ones is amazingly short — thirty-three days, I believe. On the other hand, the hours are longer than ours (or rather mine, to be just a bit snooty), nine to seven-thirty or eight. Herr Pommer tells me that musicals with a Viennese waltz flavor are the current European box-office bet. In the U.S.S.R. I visited both the silent picture studio of Sovkino and the talking picture studio, too. At the former, an exceedingly intelligent and attractive Soviet director, Waldemar Stepanoff, took me around, an Intourist girl guide acting as interpreter. (I am tremendously tempted to tell you some non-cinematic anecdotes of Soviet Russia, but if I ever got started .... besides Mr. Maurice Hindus and the other excellent American reporters are telling the story with such thoughtful skill that it would be presumptuous of me to utter vague generalities based on impressions gleaned in a five-day visit. I’m not quite able to resist giving you just one, however. As it is quite personal and altogether trivial, I’m sure you won’t read into it some esoteric political parable.) ▼ ▼It seems that the usual American tourist to U.S.S.R. is pretty much of a trial to the Russian ladies of the Intourist who guide him. Instead of facing the fact that he’s Alice-Through-the-Looking-Glass and that the Jabberwocky might be worth deciphering, he kicks at his accomodations and the food, and behaves in general like the Big Boss’s show-off son at a factory clam-bake. Now it so happened that my mother brung (yes, it’s brung) me up to give my seat to ladies in street cars, and besides my beard was at this time in the early pin-cushion or late Trotzky period. I puzzled them. According to what they had seen, I neither acted, talked nor looked like an American. On the other hand I spoke English and my trousers (when I arrived) were pressed. My guide finally broke down and confessed that her Intourist comrades had asked her what kind of a bird I was. When she told them I was American they were incredulous. “Why,” they said, “he looks like a Big Bolshevik!” ▼ ▼ At the Sovkino silent studio they are building several large new stages which will be sound-proofed. When Mr. Stepanoff showed them to me they were about half-finished, and showed every promise of being entirely up-to-date. The studio now being used for talkies is fairly small and has a temporary sound-proofing, more or less like that used in Hollywood in the early days. The Russians use a French