Motion Picture Magazine (Aug 1928-Jan 1929)

! C^on^paail opiate Color You'll find the ideal mate for your complexion in one of the three shades of Po-Go Rouge! Are you dark? Choose Ronce. Blonde? Then it'sBrique. Want daring dash? Use bright, bright Vif. Po-Go blends naturally with your own coloring. Hand-made in Paris, of the finest French ingredients, it's brought over here to adorn your beauty and costs 50c, import tax and all. Try Po-Go companionately. You will be wed to it for life! £JGoilOlfGE At most stores — in a French-designed leatherette box. Say "Po-Go" — ■ name your shade and blush becomingly! Or by mail from us — 50c GUY T. GIBSON, Inc. 565 Fifth Ave., New York City a Rouge 50< Made and Packaged in France ©1928 G.T.G.,Inc. VcritnegkctaCcld Just Rub Away Danger Serious illness often starts with a cold. Ward off your colds with Musterole (it may prevent pneumonia). Don't take chances. At the first warning sign, rub Musterole on the chest and throat. It -*' tingles, penetrates and draws out soreness. Musterole, is a counter-irritant that helps to break up a cold. For prompt relief from chest cold, croup and bronchitis, tonsilitis, neuralgia, rheumatism and headache, pains in joints and chilblains rub on Musterole. Keep a jar handy. To Mothers: Musterole is also made in milder form for babies and small children. Ask for Children's Musterole. BETTER THAN A MUSTARD PLASTER Gagged To Glory {Continued from page 48) earn their hire by making the mental mastodons of the movies into household words. You've heard of Goldwyn, surnamed Samuel. But unless you're of the inner circle, Victor Shapiro is as vague a personage to you as Victor Emmanuel. Yet, but for Shapiro, Goldwyn would be no more a household word than antidisestablishmentarianism. Deliberately and with malice aforethought, Shapiro set out to propound a series of puns, jokes and witty sayings presumed to emanate from the austere and unscintillating Goldwyn. It is probable that Sam's life will always be virginal so far as wise-cracks are concerned; it. is doubtful if he would recognize a nifty even in one of his own subtitles. Yet Shapiro went right ahead and knocked 'em off their chairs with a fund of Goldwyn anecdotes ranking with Lincolniana. Ripples of laughter spread from coast to coast through hall and hamlet. Goldwyn became a personality. Which was in a way gratifying. But very puzzling withal. So much so that upon more than one occasion Shapiro was subjected to a testy questioning, "Vic, tell me, why is it you make from me all these funny stories?" And Vic would deny and stall and alibi, and go right ahead making Goldwyn into a household word. Vic pinned on Goldwyn the one about, "I'll tell you in two words, im-possible." And the one about, "All the great men in the film business are dying, tell me, do I look sick?" And the one about reading a criticism of his photoplay which described it as a poignant drama, and exclaiming, "Oi, I thought it was a clean picture." So Goldwyn was gagged to glory, and is better known throughout the land than many a man whose movie magnitude is cubits greater. LON AND VON, HOW THEY GO ON DON'T shoot! It may be Lon Chaney! That fellow Lon Chaney is such a twofaced guy! And a host of similar nifties have established this actor as the sine qua non of cinemaland when it comes to grotesqueries of make-up. They have added to his popularity, increased his box-office value, added to his earning power. Every Jock who takes his Doris to the movies, will try to haw-haw himself into her heart by proving with a Chaney gag that he is really a deucedly clever chap, and a quite desirable lover. And then in sheer gratitude select Lon's latest as the film to be seen. Von Stroheim, who never in his career has made a bad picture, is a household word. Not because of his unexcelled ability, but because of roguish waggeries. What cut-up hasn't pointed to some gigantic warehouse with the quip that it was built to hold the negative of "The Wedding March?" Such fooleries are remembered when "Foolish Wives" is forgotten. And the yokelry flocks to a Von Stroheim drama because of them. De Mille has been built into a household word. His name, more than any other — with the possible exception of Griffith's — is associated with the direction of motion pictures. If a wielder of the mystic megaphone appears in cartoon, caricature, novel, play or picture, the characterization is a reflection from the De Mille aura. Examine the record and you may find this lofty eminence has been attained by anecdote more than by achievement. Theodore Roberts on "The King of Kings" set, sending word to De Mille, "Tell God that Moses and Aaron are waiting to see him." Famous last words, "No, Mr. De Mille." Reference to his lavish expenditures by producers, "Over De Mille to the poorhouse." And this shrewd showman knows the worth of every wise-crack. According to no less an authority than his very clever daughter, Cecilia, the great C. B. gets as big a laugh from each of them as Marie Prevost contributes to "The Godless Girl." A producer of two-reel alleged comedies made a tremendous stride toward being a household word when he got red-faced and spluttered, "My comedies are not to be laughed at!" Two, at the most three, more such nifties, and crowds would have lined the foyers of theaters showing his atrocities. NIFTIES ABOUT NEGRI GILDA GRAY became a household word when she superseded a bowl of jelly. Instead of the age-worn simile, "To shake like a bowl of jelly," America welcomed its variation, "To shake like Gilda Gray." Gilda's fame is based on this. If some one will dig up a few more, her career on the screen will prove as brilliant as her stage success. Pola Negri was good box-office just so long as the publicity department flooded the land with tales of her temperamentality, gags accentuating the bizarre in her makeup, nifties regarding her charities, such as presenting a motion picture machine to a blind children's home. When they quit making nifties on Negri, her pictures became film-salesmen's nightmares. Jetta Goudal was in the way of being a big shot during the days when she was described as the cocktail of temperament. Gags about her vagaries made good table talk. Unfortunately Jetta was kidding in earnest, and the producers, lacking all sense of humor, decided that too much was enough. Even Gloria became more interesting when the Marquise gags gained vogue. And everyone wanted to see the star who insisted on being wheeled from her dressing-room to the movie set. A story, incidentally, which had no foundation in fact. Minor indiscretions, such as those of Gilbert and Chaplin add length, breadth, and no inconsiderable thickness to the queue of the curious who line up before the ticket-taker's window. ALL WET FROM "RAIN" FROM the time of the gag about the guy who played the stable-boy in "The Four Horsemen," pictures themselves have been wise-cracked to greater prominence. When Richard Dix called his epic "The Varnishing Armenian," the punny fellow's nifty rolled from tongue to tongue till every wag from Joe Frisco to Cy Corntossel was unconsciously boosting the show. Both "The Ten Commandments" and "The King of Kings" were gagged to greater glory than they would have gained legitimately by slightly sacrilegious snickers which echoed from Hollywood to Hoboken at the funny phrases of a thousand jokesters. Even such puerilities as Sadie Thompson being all wet from "Rain" helped make the Swanson success a household word before it was released. Unfortunately there are too few Victor Shapiros in the film business (art, industry). If he were triplets, there would be three-fold more household words in motion pictures. It would pay richly to develop more of these rollicking lingual roisterers for the publicity positions which are occupied by young men who take themselves and their work more seriously than Moses took the tablets from heaven. They've forgotten Alice White's recipe for success, "Keep your sense of humor and don't kid yourself." Unless the( situation changes, the decline and fall of the/\ gag, the fnifty and the wise-crack is immi-i \ nent. And this indeed is something to be viewed with alarm. 94 1