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These two photographs show Noah Beery as he is and when he plays one of those villainous heavies. He is one of many who are glad they are making the villain human
THE past year in Hollywood has produced a film phenomenon so startling and unorthodox that literally reams have been written in efforts to explain the whyfore and the wherefore of it all.
I refer, of c'ourse, to the "Renaissance of Villainy" — the startling movement that has. apparently almost overnight, so imbued our leading screen villains with worthy and even likable traits that they seem almost like normal human beings.
As a matter of fact, the causes underlying this "humanizing" of villainy are both simple and inevitable.
The whole thing means merely that the public has become tired of seeing lunatics, and accordingly, for the first time in screen history, has endowed the villain with a brain.
VILLAINY
The Leering Heavy Who Crashed Into a
Scene Like a Rampant Cyclone Has Faded
Out of the Picture
By Scott Pierce
The change is a welcome one. Lunatics, while admittedly spectacular, have certain deficiencies as a steady, dramatic diet.
\nd, by no stretch of the imagination, could the old-time screen
or stage villain be regarded as anything else than a stark.
raving lunatic. In sheer reasoning power, he would have
run a poor second to a three-weeks-old calf.
The stage edition of the "menace" was bad enough —
the suave, bemustached cur who, in the second act,
snarled, "Give meh the papers-s-s-s, or I'll tear up
the chee-ild !" or words to that general effect ; and
who sneered heartlessly in the third act as the
heartbroken old father quavered pathetically,
"Stranger — yuh ain't done right by our little Nell !"
Desperate Desmonds
Then the movies came along and proceeded to remove what few faint glimmerings of common sense the villain still possessed. For years there were only two standard types of screen "heavies," and both were lunatics. The first was the parlor snake, the effeminate degenerate who smoked perfumed cigarets, affected spats and a tiny waxed mustache, and whose sole aim in life was apparently to lead astray as many innocent young women as could be conveniently crowded into a normal working day. The second was the hairy ape, the hulking moron with the muscular development of a gorilla, who drank nitric acid for a tonic and used kerosene for a chaser, and who beat his brawny chest and furiously engaged in mortal combat anything that came his way, whether it happened to be a stray kitten or a troop of U. S. Cavalry.
The last reel usually found the first type of "heavy" in the penitentiary, and the second type in the cemetery. Both should have been placed in padded cells before the picture even started, and turned over to psychiatrists for a much-needed mental
overhauling.
Becoming Human Beings
Dut now the Era of Lunacy has passed. The screen "menace" has become a rational, thinking,
George Siegmann, left, is one of the veteran heavies of the screen. He is also glad to see the villain emerge as a man of brains. Lou Tellegen, right, a polished "menace," declares audiences will soon be rooting for the villain
Freulich
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