Hollywood Spectator (Apr-May 1939)

pleasant photographing, and other technical contributions, including the considerable background music from Roy Webb, are of a good sort. Innocuous but scarcely stimulating. Some of the performances are good, but the yarn, about aspirants to sororities, misses the spirit of campus life. Another Gangster Film and Sullivan 0 BIG TOWN CZAR; Universal production; directed by Arthur Lubin; associate producer, Ken Goldsmith; screen play, Edmund Hartmann; based on original by Ed Sullivan; photographed by Elwood Bredell; art director. Jack Otterson; film editor, Philip Cahn; musical director, Charles Previn. Cast; Barton MacLane, Tom Brown, Eve Arden, Jack La Rue, Frank Jenks. Walter Woolf King, Oscar O'Shea, Esther Dale, Horace MacMahon, Jerry Marlowe, Ed Sullivan. Running time, 62 minutes. Reviewed by Bert Harlen ROUTINE gangster film. Purporting to remind us once again that only evil can be expected to come from the tenements, where only “the tough and ugly weeds” survive, the picture never allows its zeal for sociological preachment to get in the way of its spreading sundry excitements across the screen, shootings, gangster intrigues, and the like. I am not wholly questioning the sincerity of Ed Sullivan or Edmund Hartmann, authors respectively of the original story and screen play. I only point out that they have a convenient faculty for keeping one eye on the sensational. Authors of these preaching melodramas should branch out into more fruitful themes. Take, for instance, “It Is Wrong to Beat Your Wife” — think what drama would lie in the agonized screams of the missus as she is dragged across the floor by the hair. A purely illustrative incident, understand. Or better yet, “Never Hit Your Grandma With a Pickax" — the gory details would be simply colossal. Sullivan Prominently Cast <]] Be that as it may, the present picture is undistinguished in either story or treatment. As the story is told, the very basis of it is weak, since we cannot believe that a boy who has been working his way through college, spurning the assistance of his elder brother, a successful racketeer, would suddenly be tempted by the gift of a hundred dollar bill, left behind after the latter’s visit, into joining his brother in the racketeering business. Barton MacLane and Tom Brown do about as well with the parts as could be done. Eve Arden has ability but has little chance to show it here. Statements of a similar pattern could be phrased for most of the other players. Oscar O’Shea and Esther Dale stand out as the grieved parents. Ed Sullivan acts as narrator in several parts of the picture and also plays himself in a number of scenes. If he is ambitious to add the art of Thespis to his literary attainments, it is to be hoped he is fortified to brave the critical estimates of his writing colleagues, able to take it as well as dish it out. Mr. Sullivan is terrible. Arthur Lubin directed. Inferior in story and treatment. Not for children, despite a veneer of moral preachment. Jonathan Asks for Rehearsal Reform /N T HE last Spectator I made public a letter which Jonathan Hale wrote me without thought of its publication. He writes me again, whether for publication or for my exclusive edification. I do not know, but, anyway. I pass the letter on to you. — \V. B. ELEORD! Do you think that’s nice? You have less conscience than a casting director. At your request I mail you a little nut of wisdom, something for your own convenience, and you don’t even bother to shell it — just toss it husk and all into your Spectator. Why, that’s like a director printing a rehearsal you didn’t know was being shot. It’s just plain low. However, I must say you printed it in a fine looking magazine. Congratulations on the new Spectator. And privately, Welford, I am flattered that you thought it good enough to print in the best publication in the business. Here is something that will interest you. Oliver Hinsdell. who announces his Studio of Dramatic Art in that same issue, came in this morning. He had just read my stuff about training people for the screen in an ordinary room. He says he is going one better. He is going to train his students on picture sets and with picture scripts and direct them as for camera and microphone. It seems the youngsters will be getting their money’s worth of practical instruction. I don’t know of another setup like this. Do you? Jonathan Discusses Rehearsing <1 The lack of adequate rehearsal is something that bothers many actors — particularly those fresh from the stage. You carry weight on questions of production results and I know you have thought about this. I’d like to give you one actor's angle to add to the rest of your data and to use, if you like, when you get around to it. The way it is now, we seldom have a reasonable time to digest our scenes before we put them on a strip of film for the world to look at. Actors go before the camera knowing only their lines. In the few minutes of rehearsing we do to get the mechanics of the thing worked out for the camera, we must take from each other and give to each other all in way of meaning and characterization that we can snatch out of past experience. There is an opportunity to do something more with it in the closer shots that follow, but nothing very radical. Stage Allows More Time Recently I did an eight-page scene, my first in the picture and one of the most important in the story. I deliberately paced it slowly, with nonchalance and ease because that seemed the obvious thing. I felt, too, that I was giving it greater value by the contrast this would provide with what had happened before, which of course, I had read but had not seen shot. Imagine my chagrin when at the preview I found the whole picture was slowly paced. You may blame that on direction, writing, or supervision if you like, but the fact remains that I could have played my scene just as truthfully at a faster, more vital pace. This would have pulled up the tempo and vitality of the whole thing. Had I been there and seen and taken part in a rehearsal of the sequence, I would have done this. Now contrast this method of working with the weeks of study, coaching and rehearsing a stage production gets. Somewhere in between lies a better way. I have benefited by, and been the victim of, several variations, but I have never seen tried the thing which, to my mind, promises the most success from a performance point of view and, I suspect, from the angle of production economy as well. Jonathan Makes Suggestion Here is the idea: Stop production around four-thirty or five o’clock and dismiss the crew. From then until six, rehearse what will be shot the following day. The cameraman and cutter should be present. The advantage of this is that the director has a chance to crystallize his ideas: he is, in a sense, visually a day ahead of his picture: the cameraman has a chance to unravel his problems: the cutter would be of help to both of them, and they to him. But most important, even if those three don’t see these advantages — and who am I to say?— the actors get time to think over their scene, sleep on it, digest it down to significant, rounded behavior, clean it up and sharpen it to its dramatic essentials. And here I speak from experience. Many a scene has given me indigestion and I have given many a (Continued on page 19) PAGE TWELVE HOLLYWOOD SPECTATOR