Hollywood Spectator (1931)

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14 Hollywood Spectator single idea of avenging the slaying of her lover. But some genius on the set filled her eyes with glycerine which glittered on her cheeks and made her look like a cry-baby. Misses Fire PRESUMING Paramount’s purpose in making My Sin was a gesture on its part to relieve in some measure the prevailing box-office slump, I am afraid its efforts will prove unavailing. In the rampant talkie days it might have got by, but to-day when the public prefers seeing its pictures to listening to them, there is nothing in it to justify its making. It comes from the Long Island studios, was directed by George Abbott, and stars jointly Tallulah Bankhead and Fredric March. The rest of the cast is composed of people who are unknown to screen audiences. What puzzles me about the production is how Paramount could have imagined that it had even a slight chance of success. If Frank Borzage can take a trivial story of two unknown players and give us such a smashing box-office success as Bad Girl is proving to be, Abbott can not blame the failure of his picture on the poor story and the fact that some of his players are unknown. He had more to start with than Borzage had. There is more story in every reel of My Sin than there is in all of Bad Girl; Fredric March is well established as a favorite and Miss Bankhead has been exploited widely. But it is all to no avail because it fairly reeks of the theatre, because in the writing of the scenario and in the manner of its direction there is nothing that suggests the screen. There is not a scene in it that will earn the sympathy of an audience. Such SCREEN entertainment as My Sin presents is as definitely out of date as side-whiskers. For a year or more the box-office has been pounding home that truth, and the producing organizations proceed blithely to ignore it and to blame poor receipts on the prevailing depression. Occasionally Paramount gives us something human like Tom Sawyer and Skippy, which the public patronizes liberally, and then it goes ahead with a lot of other productions that it should know in advance the public will refuse to patronize. When I wrote three years ago that producers were foolish in going over wholly to talkies, I can understand my failure to impress them, as box-office conditions then seemed to prove me wrong, but it is quite beyond my ability to understand why they continue to turn them out now that the box-office is doing its best to impress upon them how foolish it is. In My Sin uninteresting people say uninteresting things endlessly. There is a dinner sequence that might have been directed by the rawest amateur. The characters express opinions that we feel at once are not theirs but which they must express solely to keep the story from coming to a full stop. March gives an excellent performance, but Miss Bankhead, who fascinated me in the only other picture in which I have seen her, bored me in this one. And I don’t see why in the closing sequences she dressed and made up to resemble an eagle. Reckless Living APPARENTLY Junior Laemmle thought he needed a mental holiday. He has given us quite a procession of excellent pictures that could have been the product only of real picture intelligence, and now he gives us Reckless Living which is weak, cheap, trashy, dull and a few other things that adjectives can express when they wish to be uncomplimentary. I don’t know how much merit there may have been in the play. On the Up and Up, but if there happened to be any, Courtenay Terrett, Richard Schayer and Tom Reed failed to find it and put it into the script which Cyril Gardner shot. Cyril Gardner Mae Clarke and Norman Foster are a young married couple, who are so anxious to get along in some respectable business that they open a speakeasy to earn the capital necessary to make them respectable. Their ultimate ambition is to own a gas station in New Jersey. Every few feet in the picture the line is repeated — “The gas station in New Jersey” — until it becomes ludicrous. No picture intelligence whatever was displayed in the writing of the script from which the picture was shot. The camera plays no part in telling the story, everything being put over in dialogue which is commonplace and uninteresting. Gardner’s direction made a bad job worse — although in his defense I must say that no ♦ ♦♦"I loathe a room that looks Interior Decorated' "♦♦♦ We quite agree with you. That is why we strive for charm rather than the strictly traditional, for modern effect rather than rickety elegance, for perfect taste rather than mere correctness. Of course, it takes knowledge and a distinct flair to do this sort of thing without sacrificing either smartness or atmosphere but, (with all due modesty) we do just this. Estimates and Sketches Free. THE MODERNE FURNITURE COMPANY, LTD. Western Avenue at Sunset (Opposite Fox Studios) HOLLYWOOD Telephone: HE 5388 George Abbott