Hollywood Spectator (1937-39)

Hollywood Spectator Page Seven quences than is displayed in any other detail of direction. When activity on a dance floor is advisable for its value as a spectacle, the characters who have dialogue to advance the story should leave the floor and do their talking in a secluded spot to which the dancers in the distance could serve as a background. . . . Oddly enough, after the above was put in type I found in Dramatic School exactly the treatment I suggest here for a dance sequence. * * * MYSTERY OF THE PARKED CAR . . . rHE other evening I left my car in the parking lot of the Bond Market, on Ventura, near Laurel Canyon Boulevard, while I went into the market, called a conference of department heads to determine what we should feed the two cats a frankly fickle female feline foisted on us, when the two refused to eat more of what we had been feeding them. I got something, drove home, and on the floor in the back of the car found a tennis racket with a smoothly worn handle, its tip taped and its stringed part in a clamped frame. Will the person who put it in my car please send me some balls and a tennis court and come up some time and play with me? Or perhaps it would be simpler if he called at the Spectator office and identified the racket. * * * WORDS THAT PASS IN THE NIGHT . . . FEW years ago I was a guest at a dinner given by the Faculty Club of Columbia University, New York. I was asked to speak and in the course of my remarks a professor asked me how I would define a motion picture. I gave my definition. Later I was told by several of the guests that the definition was the most concise and illuminating they had heard. For years I had been searching mentally for a definition which would express precisely and briefly my conception of a motion picture, and I was somewhat proud of the fact that upon the spur of the moment I had hit upon exactly what I wanted, proud because it is difficult to put in a few words exactly what the entertainment picture is, and at last I had done it to the satisfaction of such a highly intellectual group as I had addressed. Ever since that night I have tried to recall just how my definition was worded, and also have been trying to form another that would satisfy me, but so far, no luck. * * * HOW RADIO HURTS PICTURES . . . ONE of the oft repeated contentions of the Spectator is that the film business suffers because of the manner in which pictures and picture people are presented in radio broadcasts. At a recent convention of the Motion Picture Theatre Owners of America, the organized influence of producing organizations as exhibitors, the annual report pointed out that, “the appearance of film stars on radio has increased alarmingly in the past year; that stars are frequently presented to radio audiences in hastily prepared material and poorly presented skits, and that stars have appeared on the air in synopses of current picture productions; that certain producers are encouraging these star appearances in additional excerpts from story material, and that, as was predicted by MPTGA last year, certain stars have definitely destroyed themselves as box-office attractions by radio appearances.” * * * MENTAL MEANDERINGS . . . HEN the Spaniel was a puppy I used to take him on my lap. Can anyone tell me how to impress upon a full grown dog that he no longer is a lap dog? . . . Just been informed my bed will not be made at the usual time this morning; the two cats are asleep on it. . . . A North Hollywood marquee: Time Out for Murder, Sisters. . . . Have moved to my chair on the front lawn to continue my writing: handicapped at the moment by the position of Granddaughter Wendy astride my shoulders, playing that I am a horsie. . . . The Brown Derby raspberry ice is delicious. . . . Read Ed Durling in Los Angeles Times regularly; wish he would explain his prejudice against the use of question marks; but occasionally he grows careless; in one column last week there were eight questions and two of them had question marks tacked onto them. ... I see someone is going to make a picture dealing with the marriage of a woman with a man younger than herself. Don’t think I’ll see it; would recall too vividly one of the great sorrows of my life. She was nine and I was seven and I loved her. I nearly ran into her while skating and icily she remarked that babies should not be allowed to crowd grown-up skaters. And we were skating on a lake! It hurt. She was the daughter of the town night watchman and ultimately married a butcher. When a few years ago I saw how big she was, I thought how fortunate her husband was in being able to feed her meat at wholesale prices. ... A short street near our place is being paved; when it is finished, I no longer will have to drive past Perry Leiber's house and be sneered at by his children’s pet monkey. . . . The greatest Christmas present I ever received was given to me by a clergymam two days before Christmas in 1908; presentation took place in a church and the gift has been my most cherished possession ever since, growing in value during each of the thirty years. My public name for what the clergyman gave me is Mrs. Spectator. . . . The sun was setting when we reached the bridge across the Avon when one goes from Oxford to Stratford; the western sky was ablaze with color which dyed the water below us and put a brilliant fringe on the leaves of trees which lined both banks. Back against the sun stood the church in which Shakespeare is buried. We sat spellbound by the beauty of it when our car stopped on the bridge; then we went on, and not long after, I stood by myself in the room in which the Bard of Avon was born, gazed on the bed on which the birth took place, and experienced what I think is the greatest thrill a man who writes could have.