Movie Classic (Sep-Dec 1931)

Between Ourselves DON'T miss "Street Scene." It's one of the most powerful pictures of all time — a slice of life that will tear your heart out. It's the biggest thing that Hollywood has done since "All Quiet." You look down into one seething street in the tenement district of New York — just one street — and there you see human nature in the raw. You see all types of people, all types of emotion, all types of drama — from comedy straight through melodrama to tragedy. And so real is all of it that you forget these men and women are actors and actresses. There isn't one of them who doesn't seem to belong to this street, this life, these emotions. ^THEODORE DREISER, who wrote "An AmerJ ican Tragedy," is realistic to the point of brutality No wonder he set up a howl when he saw the picture version of his bitter novel! Did you notice the girl employees in the collar-factory scenes? There wasn't one of them who didn't look as if she ought to be in the Follies, dining at the Ritz, and wearing ermine. the film is making. "Little Caesar," "The Doorway to Hell" and "The Public Enemy" were excellent character sketches of gunmen — but, after all, who cares how racketeers rise and fall? What you and I want to know is how gangland might touch you and me. "The Star Witness" gives us a hint. Incidentally, did you know that Warner Brothers donated the proceeds of the first New York showing to the families of the five children shot down by gangsters — who were aiming at another gangster? /^\UT at the Chaplin Studio on La Brea Avenue, ^"-^ there is a ghastly silence. Of all the crowd that used to be around, whether Charlie was making a picture or not, only three remain — his personal representative, a bookkeeper and a janitor. Hollywood hears — and maybe you do, too — that he will never be back. But don't you believe it. Charlie has always been an actor, and he always will be — no matter how much gold he makes. It's in his blood. He'll be back. And when he does return, he will produce a talkie. If he appears in it himself, he will play a deaf-and-dumb man. TRYING PICHEL, who plays the cold-blooded J district attorney, is my candidate as the best character actor of the year. Every time I have seen him he has been different — and convincing every time. Remember him as the fanatical husband of Ruth Chatterton in "The Right to Love"? Remember him as the laughing half-wit in "Murder by the Clock"? Now he is to play opposite Tallulah Bankhead in "The Cheat." THE folks are wondering how "The Cheat" is going to be made as a talkie. Those with long memories recall when it was first filmed. The date was 191 5, and Fanny Ward and Sessue Hayakawa made themselves famous in it. In that first version the heroine was mistreated by an Oriental — and maybe there wasn't a furore about that! When the film was remade a few years later, a Hindu performed the cruelty. And again there was thunder on the left. So this time the brutal gent will be an AngloSaxon. p\OLORES DEL RIO, Pola Negri and Nils i—* Asther are all staging comebacks — and they're going to be big ones. But this is even bigger news: musicals are coming back. You're going to hear Jeanette MacDonald and Gloria Swanson and John Boles and Ramon Novarro and Bebe Daniels sing again. And you'll hear some others that you haven't heard before, like Doris Kenvon and Estelle Taylor. SWEET music to our ears! As we go to press with this second issue of Movie Classic, our distributors tell us that the first issue is a sell-out. Letters pour in by every mail, telling us why. "Movie Classic is something absolutely new in screen magazines" ... "I wanted to read it from cover to cover" . . . "The tabloid section is better than a newspaper" ... "It's the first screen magazine that ever gave me my money's worth" . . . "It told me more about the movies in one hour than I ever knew before." . . . "And, boy," as Al Jolson might say, "you ain't seen nothin' yet!" THE first gangster picture I have actually enjoyed is "The Star Witness" — and there are plenty who share my reaction, judging from the hit