The New Movie Magazine (Jan-Sep 1935)

Eugene Robert Ri-chee Sylvia Sidney for substantial dramatic equipment in general Jean Muir for the best straight acting performance hour. Loretta lived it down, despite such latter vehicles as "Employes Entrance" in which she suffered the lot of all stars — trying to salvage miles of celluloid tripe with a good performance. Happily, she got her chance in "Life Begins," and again in the recent "The White Parade." This is the nurse-hospital yarn in which Loretta was permitted to display the full extent of her talents which is first sincerity, and secondly, as Mr. Nathan well says, the art of "listening" while "looking." It would be nice to record a similar advance in the career of Sylvia Sidney. "Behold, My Wife" gave her little opportunty. (I find myself, however unwittingly, justifying Mr. Nathan.) Paramount, I regret to record, exercises no more judgment, despite the once benign interest of Mr. B. P. Schulberg, with Miss Sidney than they did with Tallulah Bankhead whose fine flair for high comedy they muffed repeatedly. Just so with Miss Sidney, her dramatic talents, save for her beautiful performance in United Artists' "Street Scene," are continually wasted. She has a fine sense of dramatic pathos. She is always; and I speak now of her portrayals, the girl who is forever being done wrong by. And she plays these roles with such fortitude that one weeps at her strength — and the futility of it all. This strength of Miss Sidney's doubtless is what appeals to Mr. Nathan. His own life is based on a similar assurance, an identical poise. Miss Sidney, however miscast, is never "wrong in her roles. Neither is Nathan in his. He is as sure of his pose, a sureness based on experience, as she. He is the only man of our town and time who has justified a pose. Indeed, he lives by provocative epigrams: "To help a man (or woman) with talent you've got to kick down him who hasn't got it . . . Reinhardt is fading out in Europe (this was before he was forced out by Hitler). .He is no longer the great director who sees through the playwright's manuscript, but indulges himself in excessive scenic mountings — a money spender." (He told me all this a few years ago, and how correct it is today! Have you West Coasters seen his "Midsummer Night's Dream" extravaganza?) Well, Sylvia is like that — like Nathan, I mean — the calm exterior, but seething within. The Nathan-Sidney academic affiliation is easy to understand. Far easier than his admiration of Jean Muir, that juvenile madonna with a face not just too sweet. Jean has the most regular features of any girl in Hollywood — the dream of camera men who have said that hers is "the most perfect photographic face." They also add that "a blind man could snap her and she'd still photograph swell." This is probably publicity bunk for I have seen her mugged by the news-camera men at the Deauville Beach Club, and, dare I write it?, she was no bargain. I rather believe that what Mr. Nathan essentially admires in Miss Muir is her forthrightness. She is as courageous as Katharine Hepburn. Like Katie the firebrand, Miss Muir's "No" means No. She has no illusions about Hollywood or screen art generally. Only in Hollywood little more than a year, she said recently — "the trouble with Hollywood is that there are too many persons here who think the entire world revolves around them." An undiplomatic statement, possibly, but Miss Muir has the honesty always to call a spade a shovel. She once told a friend of mine that she expected to stay only six months in the cinema; thought the studio executives crazy to bring her out there, and crazier to keep her. Maybe this is a pose, but I don't think so. She has too much innate assurance. As do her Nathanian sisters, Miss Young and Miss Sidney, she suffers, too, by miscasting and poor stories. It was a frightful thing to make her bear the brunt of cen (Please turn to page 53) The New Movie Magazine, February, 1935 17