Hollywood Spectator (1937-39)

Page Four September 18, 1937 place in it that is there by demand of the creation itself. A wise-cracking character must wise-crack to keep the pattern harmonious; but in this Universal picture none of the characters was of the wise-cracking variety, and any lines included to make laughter would have disturbed the pattern’s harmony. Screen wise-cracking had its genesis in the days of silent pictures. Gilbert Seldes, in his The Movies and the Talkies summed it up this way: “Because Anita Loos wrote witty lines and C. Gardner Sullivan had a flamboyant style which appealed to Griffith, the title became an end in itself as part of the entertainment and as part of the story, until, with all their imitators working very hard, the directors of films began to depend on them to do what the camera itself should have done, and the titles gave long dialogues, or told about action, or attempted to establish a mood — all of which was the business of the camera.’’ Seldes’ book was published in 1929. Prior to that — in the SPECTATOR of May 15, 1926 — I had my say about wise-cracking titles: “I feel they do not belong in pictures. They necessitate a thought process different from that involved in following the story as told by the scenes.’’ The same criticism applies to wise-cracking dialogue in talkies. * * * HOW TO UNMAKE AN ACTRESS . . . PARAGRAPH in a recent Daily Variety has a sermon hidden in it. It tells of a little girl who found herself in Sam Briskin’s office at RKO without being aware she was in the presence of the big chief of the studio. “She perched on his desk and was her natural self,’’ says Variety, “and before she got out Briskin had tied her to a playing contract.” The whole problem of the miss will be the presentation on the screen of the personality which captured Sam’s fancy. But no doubt the studio will try to make an actress out of her, will teach her to express herself with tricks instead of with personality, with the result that her first option will not be taken up. * * * ONE IN A THOUSAND . . . ONE young man who has my sympathy is Robert Taylor. Catapulted from obscurity to worldwide fame in less than two score months. Bob has kept his head and as far as his prominence would permit him to do so, has pursued the even tenor of his ways. By accident of birth he has developed into a young man with a regularity of features which appeals to impressionable young women and causes small men to call him “pretty.” Hounded by women, the butt of brainless printed paragraphs, the victim of unwise exploitation by his employers, his every action news, he still is just a matter-of-fact, decent young fellow whose only desire is to do his work and to be left alone during his leisure hours. I believe one in a thousand is a liberal estimate of the number of young men who could keep both feet on the ground when going through the dazzling transformation Bob has experienced, and among the 999 would be the Hollywood people whose jealousy prompts them to make him the butt of their inane wisecracks. * * * SHOULD HAVE EMOTIONAL APPEAL . . . HERE are various degrees of intellectual development. All of us do not have the same brains, but we do have the same emotions. The audience for intellectual dramas, therefore, is limited, while that for emotional dramas is limitless. The motion picture with purely emotional appeal can entertain one hundred per cent of its audience, while one with purely intellectual appeal can entertain only those in the audience with intellects to grasp it. Yet picture producers vie with one another to make their productions highbrow, to make them intellectual instead of emotional, to tell their stories with dialogue instead of with pictures. * * * RATHER SAD COMMENTARY . . . ONE of the chatter columnists, discussing Mae West’s picture in the making, remarks, “It took the Hays office some weeks to put the stamp of approval on the script.” Sad sort of commentary on the business when a producer permits the preparation of a script with so much indecency in it that it takes weeks of pawing over to make it decent. * * * STAGE vs. SCREEN AGAIN . . . JHE screen’s vast superiority over the stage in building to a dramatic climax is illustrated vividly in Stage Door, RKO production reviewed in this SPECTATOR (page nine). Katharine Hepburn, a wealthy girl, is given the leading part in a play: Andrea Leeds, a skilled actress should have been given it, Katharine having had no acting experience. Our sympathy is with Andrea. At rehearsals Katharine, whose father is financing the play, is terrible: we know the play is going to be a flop. Andrea kills herself an hour before the curtain goes up: Ginger Rogers storms into Katharine’s dressing room and blames her for the tragedy. The curtain goes up on the scene we had seen Katharine murder in rehearsal. Now we feel she is going to play it for Andrea, as Andrea would have played it. On the stage it must have been a great scene. On the screen it is great too, but does not get all its strength from itself as it must on the stage. The girls from the boarding house in which all of them live, occupy seats in front rows, and as Katharine begins her scene, as the pathos, the feeling, the quiet intensity she puts into it, grip the audience, the camera moves slowly from one bewildered face to another to acquaint us with the reaction of the girls in the front rows; we see bewilderment at first, then realization of the source of Katharine’s inspiration, then tears. And all the time Katharine’s lines are coming from the stage. We, too, have grown to love Andrea, to sympathize with her, to believe in