Hollywood Spectator (1937-39)

Page Six December 10, 1938 only stable boys and jockeys ride, but I can see whole heaps of fun in owning a trotter and driving it yourself. America's First Sweetheart . . . NGRACIOUS return it would be for occasions upon which I have enjoyed the hospitality of Pickfair, if I said anything to dim the luster of the title an admiring public conferred upon the gracious lady whose personality it expresses, but, even so, I have to break to Mary the news that the first “America’s Sweetheart” was a horse. But Mary need not be discomfited. It was a darned good horse — or, to be precise, mare. I read all about her in Golden Hoofs, a book by William Carey Duncan. Her name was Goldsmith Maid. She was foaled in 1857, which, if she still were living, would make her about as old as some of the horses I bet on last winter at Santa Anita seemed to be. Her first season of competitive trotting was when she was nine years old. She won $20,000. Then she was supposed to be through; she was lame, hard to handle, showing affection only for her groom and for a mongrel dog whom she refused to let out of her sight except when she was on the track. But she perked up, and during the next four years won $125,000 in purses, established a record of 2.17 for the mile, a figure she reduced to 2.14 when she was fifteen years old. By that time the whole country was nutty about her; she was called The Maid Supreme, Queen of the Turf, and — America’s Sweetheart. Her owners were forced to place guards around her stall to keep away her admirers who fought for nails from her shoes and hairs from her tail. She retired from competition when she was twenty and after she had won in purses a total of — get ready, you local horse owners — $325,000! Isn’t that an all-time high? . . . The moral of all this is that there is money in trotters, they live longer and give you a lot more fun than the dainty gallopers you run to death before they are half the age America’s Sweetheart was when she began to compete. * * * CHARLIE WILL HIT HITLER . . . PAPERS had it that Charlie Chaplin had abandoned his plan to caricature Hitler in the picture he hopes to start shooting next month, the reason advanced being that the Hays organization had frowned on the idea of irritating Germany’s maniac while international diplomacy was in a state of turmoil. There is no truth in the report. Charlie will wear the little black moustache when he plays a dictator, and it will be up to the audience to see him or not to see him as Hitler, whichever it prefers. I have rather good authority for my denial of the newspaper stories: Charlie himself. * * * COMMENDABLE CONTRIBUTIONS . . . ASTLY commendable is the action of those screen people who are contributing their talent to a radio program in order to swell the revenue of the Motion Picture Relief Fund. More than in any other city in which a great industry is centered, is Hollywood in need of a large and stable relief fund for the needy among those who work for the film industry. It is the most heartless industry in the world, perhaps the only one in which faithful service means nothing in the way of assurance of permanent employment. On the Boulevard this morning I met Herbert Mundin. I cannot recall when I last saw him on the screen. I do not mean even to insinuate that he is a candidate for relief; on the contrary, he informed me he was having a fine time buying Christmas presents, but as I left him I recalled the scores of excellent performances he had contributed to pictures. As much satisfactory service to any other industry in existence would have assured him continuous employment; to the film industry it means nothing. Still using Herbert as a symbol, talent scouts are scouring the country for actors to fill roles for which he is much better qualified by ability and experience. And you can multiply him by several hundred to reach all the actors and actresses who are victims of the industry’s heartlessness and lack of ordinary business sense. The Herbert Mundins have millions of friends among film fans; the people who take their places on the screen are in the same position as the Mundins were years ago when they started and had to spend years in making their friends. There are not many people in pictures who are secure in a material way. There always will be need for the Motion Picture Relief Fund, and it is the duty of those who are fortunate enough to be able to do it, to contribute their bit to assure its ability to meet all the demands made upon it. Those contributing to the radio programs are doing their bit. * * * DANCING AND DIALOGUE . . . IS letter on the whole is most flattering, but one of the first-flight directors wants to know why, in my review of one of his pictures, I took him to task for his direction of a dance sequence in which two principals spoke intimate lines on the dance floor. “You see the same thing in lots of pictures,” he writes, “but I haven’t seen the same criticism in any other publication, which leads me to believe that you are the only critic it offends.” The mood of a scene should govern both its locale and its action. If two players present a scene in which the mood is preserved by its regard for its inherent intimacy, it follows that the lines in it must be read in intimate tones to suggest the characters realize they must not be overheard. In the many dance scenes to which I object, two players, with the tips of their noses almost touching, discuss intimate matters in tones which suggest their ignorance of the fact that other dancers are touching elbows with them. That totally dissipates the mood the scene should sustain. The scene is made more aggravating by the fact that not another dancer on the floor is saying a word, that all of them are shuffling along in wooden-faced silence which heightens the absurdity of the loud tones in which the principals converse. There is less directorial intelligence displayed in handling dance se