Hollywood Spectator (1937-39)

Page Six January 30, 1937 make it engrossing entertainment worth the seeing if you can enjoy another screen story about robbery and murder. The production is adequate, the settings reflecting the progress Jack Otterson is making toward recognition as an outstanding art director. QeVERAL years ago it was when I first expressed my views on the manner in which, under some circumstances, singing voices should be presented on the screen. What 1 meant is demonstrated in She’s Dangerous. Walter Pidegon is presented as a doctor, not as a singer. In one of the few spots in the picture suggesting a domestic atmosphere — (At that juncture two men came to install the telephone. They disturbed me because I wanted the phone placed on a small gate-leg table beside my easy chair, as I am lazy and object to going elsewhere to use it. I learned one of the men was named Arthur because he answered when I called my dog. He called the other Bob, so for the past hour I have Arthur and Bob on my hands. Anyway, I could not proceed with my writing when they had to work where my chair sets, so I sort of superintended the job. For the first time in my life I met a toggle bolt. When you wish to affix anything to a plaster wall and can not find wood behind the plaster where you want to fasten the thing, you are out of luck if you have no doodle bug — I mean, toggle bolt. It has two folding steel prongs which, when folded close to the bolt, go through the hole you drill through the plaster, and spring open when it gets inside, finally gripping the plaster tightly when the bolt is screwed in all the way. Quite a gadget. Now I am back in my chair, my phone at my elbow — but where was I ?) M If I } stopping point was domestic atmosphere. Walter sits at the piano and begins to strum. Tala asks him to sing a certain song again, thus, incidentally, registering that there had been other such domestic scenes. Walter sings in that rich baritone voice we hear far too infrequently from the screen. That he is just a doctor singing, not a vocal artist performing, is suggested by Tala’s action in wandering from the room to the porch, and Walter’s action in ceasing his singing and following her. This treatment is cinematically sound in that the interpolated song is not allowed to check the forward progress of the story, is not allowed to give us as much of Walter’s voice as we would wish for. This makes the scene authentic by creating the impression that we are looking at an occurrence in real life and not at something staged for our entertainment. On the debit side we have a few scenes in which the dialogue is not directed properly, the fault being emphasized by the general excellence of all the rest of the direction, the joint work of Lewis Foster and Milton Carruth being most creditable. After killing Hale, Romero goes to the Newark Airport and there in a loud voices discusses with Hymer their chances of eluding the police. In Pidgeon’s mountain cabin, Romero does not lower his voice when talking with Tala about Pidgeon, even though Pidgeon is in the next room and dire consequences would result if Romero were overheard. I have said in these columns many times before, all the drama latent in the plotting of two criminals is not brought out if the tone of their voices suggests they are indifferent to the possibility of their being overheard. None of the scenes of which I complain develops half its dramatic possibilities. Loud talking, as such — (I had forgotten about Bob and Arthur, the phone man, not the dog. Arthur came in just then to test the phone and while he waited for something to be done at the other end, we had a smoke and a chat. The little tin box which the toggle bolt holds onto the side of the house has wires running from it to a steel rod driven into the ground. In case an electric company’s wire comes in contact with a telephone wire, the current of electricity is carried into the ground instead of putting your phone out of business. The toggle-bolted wire also serves as a lighting rod and will protect your house if the bolt of lightning hits near it. It is not there for that purpose, but will do the work if it is in the line of attack, the telephone company giving no free long distance service in the way of lightning protection. After Arthur left, I was settling down to work again when Mrs. Spectator came into the library with a hat in her hand and told me she wished I would get into the habit of hanging up my things. It is so long since I wore a hat that I could not recall having worn the one she had, but I tossed it onto a high shelf in a closet, and then Bob bobbed in and asked if we had seen his hat. Our collapsible step-ladder finally was found prostrate under a pile of bedding, set up and the hat retrieved from the closet shelf. I asked Bob if it were his, and he said it was and he left after thanking us and giving me a toggle bolt. I believe Arthur and Bob have gone permanently.) LoUD talking, as such, never is objectionable in scenes which demand it. Scenes in which lines which should be read in low tones, are spoken loudly, do not irritate an audience by virtue of the excess volume of noise. They offend because the loudness is not consistent with what should be the moods of the scenes. The yolk of a boiled egg, for instance, is really a beautiful thing of rich golden color, but on a man’s vest it is disgusting. There is another incident in She's Dangerous that prompts worthwhile discussion. Tala Birell goes to the apartment of Jonathan Hale to report that she has worked her way into the confidence of Romero, who is suspected of having engineered the theft of valuable bonds. Hale opens the door to her, escorts her through a room to one beyond, and there they confer. Romero picks up her trail, and finally comes along a corridor to the door in which the conference is taking place; he stands before the closed door and overhears what is said inside the room. Here we have a violation of one of the fundamental rules of all arts — that no art creation should prompt a question it does not answer. Why did Tala go from the corridor to a room beyond the one she first en