Motion Picture (Aug 1940-Jan 1941)

Who Ever Said Hollywood Couldn't Take Broadway? [Continued from page 31] theatregoers they were not acting at all, but living life. The shrewder knew that final success does not rest upon glamor of personality as much as upon the appeal of the play they would perform. Yet, the march of Hollywood to the stage has given in a few cases new impetus to what has often been deplored as the "star system." It was John Barrymore, rather than the farce rather meaninglessly called My Dear Children, that had been packing people into the theatre. It was a wish to see the man whom the critics call "the most gifted actor of our time," clowning his way with skill and charm through a part far beneath his talents that was responsible for the rush to the box-office. So insistent has been Barrymore's appeal that Hollywood, with its customary unpredictableness, beckoned anew to the actor, sought his early return to the screen. It took Broadway to convince Hollywood that there's life in the Great Profile yet. If he can make a smash hit out of a shoddy comedy, what might he not do, if he put his mind to it, with a first class film play, they are reasoning. And so, cashing in on the Great Profile, they are giving him The Great Profile. But will he put his mind to it ? Ay ! That's the question. Is he fed up with Hollywood and its short-lived glory? It is, after all, difficult to recall a John Barrymore film role. Perhaps, in stage adlibbing he has found the road to easy money. Anyway, he's enjoying himself and to the devil with the critics and their high hopes. He found headline attention seldom given to an actor because he was enjoying himself in a manner that would not be possible to one mooning about in the sombre habiliments of Hamlet. The wife, the night-clubs, the wisecracks, the Scotch, dizzy Manhattan, that's the life. Why bother with Hollywood and the laborious business of standing around all day in retakes ? I have a notion the stage will continue to be the life for John Barrymore. IF IT is Barrymore who led the Hollywood procession to Broadway, by way of Chicago and other play-hungry centers, it is Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh who have given the theatreward screen parade its most ear-and-eye catching aspect. Obviously, it is because in the past year their names have zoomed to the very top of the celluloid peaks. The association in Romeo and Juliet of the actor whose performance of the brooding Heathcliffc made Wuthering Heights such a memorable experience, and the youngactress who embodies in Scarlett O'Hara the vitality and force and fascination of that unforgettable character was the chief fillip of Broadway's Spring season. Their simultaneous screen appearances in, respectively, Rebecca and Waterloo Bridge, provided further incentive to theatregoers that here was Shakespeare under unusually attractive auspices. Yet, Broadway did not seek Olivier and Miss Leigh so much as they sought Broadway. They were restless and ambitious. They, too, would express their art and their personalities in their own flesh-and-blood production ; they would give new romantic vividness, new tragic splendor to Romeo and Juliet. The critics were impressed by the romantic vividness but found it too often submerged by the tragic splendor. Miss Leigh's exquisitely youthful loveliness, Mr. Olivier's 62 personableness and ardor were suited to their roles, but their performances suffered through, it was pointed out, too little poetic drama experience, too great emphasis upon mechanical stagecraft. As in the case of John Barrymore the stars' appeal was greater than that of their vehicle. The play, Shakespeare to the contrary, was not the thing, but the actors. Critics have always had difficulty reconciling Shakespeare's 14-year-old heroine with the emotional intensity of a mature woman. This time their dilemma was doubly hard, since Miss Leigh, for all her seeming unfamiliarity with great poetic drama, seemed to them the physical personification of Juliet. Anyway, the majority of them appeared to prefer a Juliet physically ideal to one overgrown and overaged but tragically convincing, as is usually the case. Another noted Hollywood figure had a prominent part in Romeo and Juliet. Dame May Whitty, who was such a fascinating fussbudget in the role of the aging and mysterious "lady" in The Lady Vanishes, had the part of Juliet's Nurse, played it with her customary gusto. To Broadway during the season came other Hollywood actors, notably Paul Muni, Walter Huston, Flora Robson, ' Franchot Tone, Francis Lederer, Donald Cook, all of whom were so successful in submerging their identities as to convey the illusion they were figures out of real life. They did not seem to be acting at all, which, of course, is the secret of true dramatic art. Paul Muni, always stage-struck, eagerly laid away the make-up of Zola and Pasteur and other historic figures, and returning to Broadway in Maxwell Anderson's Key Largo, enacted the role of a congenital coward with such sincerity and conviction as to win for himself the annual medal of the Drama League of New York for the best performance of the year. Walter Huston brought another notable portrait to his imposing gallery with his performance of a bewildered share-cropper in Saroyan's Love's Old Szvcet Song. Both of these men like to face an audience, like the response that is theirs in the theatre. Flora Robson, who was the foreboding, suspense-creating spinster of the narrative in Wuthering Heights, is having the time of her life in the sinister stellar role of Ladies in Retirement. Fredric March was an early Hollywood courier to the Broadway fleshpots. He supplied not only his own skill and personality to The American Way, which, for several months, occupied the capacious stage of the Rockefellers' problem child, the Center Theatre, but, it is said, considerable of his purse. Granted that the more solvent Hollywood stars can — and do — sponsor the highly-speculative business of stage production, it is also noteworthy that their enterprise often leads to new artistic glory. At any event, Franchot Tone won a distinguished name for himself this season in the principal role in The Fifth Column, Ernest Hemingway's drama of the Spanish War. There is the young Czech-American comedian, Francis Lederer, who recently completed a long tour in the enviable assignment as leading man with Katharine Cornell in No Time for Comedy. There is Donald Cook, who has won new Broadway spurs in the pleasant chore of playing opposite Gertrude Lawrence in Skylark, one of the ten biggest hits of the year. ALL of the above actors, as if we needed ■ to tell you, have greatly enhanced their screen value in their Broadway labors. At the same time, they have demonstrated effectively the growing interdependence of Hollywood and Broadway. Some of these Hollywood figures are triple-threat stars — they include radio in their activities. Such a one is Burgess Meredith, of JVintcrsct fame. He swaggered for several weeks in a notable revival of Molnar's Liliom, while conducting a pretentious dramatic program for the broadcasters. With television we will have quadruple-threat stars. And off hand who would seem especially suited to such distinction ? Why, of course, Ingrid Bergman. The lovely young Viking who made her first American film last summer when she appeared with Leslie Howard in Intermezzo and who is David O. Selznick's shrewd choice for Joan of Arc in his forthcoming film drama about the Maid of Orleans, was the particular girl friend who caused Liliom to swagger. She proved as sensitive, as altogether beguiling on the stage as when she captivated her musical mentor, Master Howard in — what was that subtitle of Intermezzo? — oh, yes ; A Love Story. Once she overcomes her accent, gains greater ease with English as she is "spoke by Joe Doakes," she will have every broadcaster, every telecaster (or should it be televisioner?) knocking on her door. For the gal has perfect photogenic features with her oval-facial contour, high cheek bones, slightly-slanting eyebrows, ingenuous smile and youthful — you can't avoid the word — glamor. "Already from the beginning," she says, "I have good roles." But she wants better ones — on the stage. After Joan of Arc, she'll probably get them. Last season was her first experience on the New York stage. She found in it no end of excitement. Alan Dinehart, Glenda Farrell and Lyle Talbot formed a Hollywood trio who had the novel assignment of sharing the same play on Broadway — a farce called Separate Rooms; only on Broadway can you share Separate Rooms, if you don't mind the pun. They rose above their stage opportunity by the sheer sincerity of their performance. Dinehart is a veteran of Broadway and the vaudeville stage. For more years than he probably would like to recall he banged around the country in a sketch called The Meanest Man in Tozvn. It was like returning to a boyhood home to come back to the theatre and hear the stimulating sound of hands being clapped. MUSICAL comedv has also tapped the Hollywood fields for talent. It failed to lure W. C. Fields back to his old haunts, but it did get other comics. They marched from the studios, several of them frankly giving as their reason the pressing call of the stage. But it is significant that a year or two ago the call would have been unanswered. They would have gone right ahead making a picture and arranging their film schedules conveniently to include a radio program. But six months constitute a Ion? period in pictures, and the comics are expert enough showmen to realize that the abiding principle of their business is to "leave 'em wanting a little bit more." A temporary silence on the screen may create a demand for an early return to the