The New Movie Magazine (Jan-Sep 1935)

2>. f^KIDDIES' COLDS TAKE CARE, mother! March is the danger season for children's colds especially. Colds are more prevalent now, and so apt to lead to more serious diseases — such as bronchitis and pneumonia. But don't worry— and don't experiment. Just treat every cold promptly with Vicks VapoRub, the proved, external method. VapoRub can be used freely— and as often as needed— even on the youngest child. No "dosing" to upset delicate little stomachs and thus lower resistance when most needed. Just rubbed on throat and chest at bedtime, VapoRub acts direct through the skin like a poultice or plaster, while its medicated vapors are inhaled direct to inflamed air-passages. Through the night, this double direct attack loosens phlegm — soothes irritated membranes— eases difficult breathing — helps break congestion. For Greater Freedom from Colds VapoRub's ideal companion is Vicks Va-tronol, the unique aid in preventing colds. (Va-tro-nol is especially designed for nose and upper throat, where most colds start.) These twin aids to fewer and shorter colds give you the basic medication of the famous Vicks Plan for Better Control of Colds— The Plan has been clinically tested by practicing physicians, and further proved in everyday home use by millions. Full details in each Vicks package Follow VICKS PLAN for better CONTROL of COLDS OLIVE OIL CREAMS — Three new creations by Vi-Jon! Fine, delicate Vi-Jon Creams blended with pure, imported Olive Oil, with its soothing, nourishing effect on the skin. For amazing results, try these new Vi-Jon Olive Oil Creams. A thorough, complete facial treatment for a few cents. Sold at the better 1 0c stores If your 10c store has not yet stocked Vi-Jon Olive Oil Creams, send us 10c for full size jar. State whether for cleansing or finishing. Larger sizes at 20c and 35c. VI-JON LABORATOR I ES, 6300 Etzel Av., St. Lou Any sewing machine, new or old, picks-up pep and quiets -down when you oil it with 3-in-0ne. In handy cans and bottles at all good stores. Just Let Me Act course, be just yourself in playing a character. There is an ecstasy about action in which you cease to be yourself, but the illusion cannot be sustained— the miracle of actually being someone else — in the making of a motion picture for the reason that its action is necessarily broken up. You can do it only in flashes, and as a rule these are not sufficient, do not come to you frequently enough, to constitute a great performance throughout. To be sure, there are exceptions. When you have been given the completed script beforehand and have had time to think out your part from beginning to end, you may achieve the maximum of characterization, but often you get a bit at a time, making it necessary to do it at a moment's notice. ''And all the time the camera is there waiting to catch your limitations. Somehow it knows, gets inside you. divulges your real self. The machine reads just what you are and puts you down in black and white. Acting for the camera is a series of frustrations — that is, for what I call acting. It relentlessly exposes all your weaknesses. This goes all down the line, even to limited vocal range, and the machine, perhaps more than the actor, has its limitations. For example, it can't take the edge of your anger — like this." Her eyes blazing, she sprang to her feet like a loosed fury and burst into such a sudden, crashing thunder of rage that I almost jumped out of my chair, not to mention my skin. "No, it can't be done," she calmly assured me, safely seated again. "You have to know how to imply anger." That was all right with me. "You can't take out of yourself all you have to give," Miss Harding now was saying, to my great relief. "It takes me two hours to become a human being after I get home from the studio. Screen acting requires far more technical knowledge than stage acting. Helen Hayes is the greatest actress on the screen or stage today, but she is bound to be greater on the stage because there she hasn't any of the restrictions of machinery. I'm using her as an example, though I think it's true of all of us." There was a knock at the door. A prop boy came in with a plate of fruitcake, saying Miss Hayes had sent it over and that she had baked it herself. Fair enough, after the plum Ann had just handed Helen! Eating didn't interfere with talking, so when I asked Miss Harding if she herself preferred the stage to the screen she said: "No, I do not. This medium fascinates me. But I think its possibilities have not been touched yet. In it. you now have to serve an apprenticeship of drudgery, going through the mistakes others have made, before you can begin to correct any of your own. At last I'm approaching a goal I thought I might reach last year. But it's only now that I've reached a sufficient flowering of freedom to command some respect and get people to listen to me. For a long time I've been interested in creating a form that will work a change in the making of pictures. At any rate. I hope it will be a step in that direction. It has to do with three-dimensional photography and a brand new type of color picture." "Then you're through with the stage?" "I don't like the bright lights and I wouldn't go back to the commercial theater," she declared. "So far as the New York stage is concerned, it has come to mean nothing but dollars to me. I don't owe any allegiance to it. But I do owe everything to the little theater, and I want to go back to the Hedgerow Theater, just outside Philadelphia, whenever I can get time off, doing a play when I'm not busy doing a picture. I was so ill in the New York theater I doubt if I could carry through the long run of a play even if I wanted to, and I don't. I had to give up playing in "The Trial of Mary Dugan" the second year of its run. The only place where I was completely happy was the little theater, just as the only reason for putting on a play is because you love it. I don't want wealth, but security." "Is that all," I was incredulous enough to ask, "that most women want?" "I don't know," she admitted with a sly smile, "but there's not a woman in the world who doesn't want security." Any time you think you can catch Ann Harding, you can't. And what she had said was true enough. But could she be true to herself playing a woman like Vergie Winters, who gives up not only wealth but her own child? "Why not?" she straightway demanded. "I loved Vergie. She broke my heart. What she did was done for her child's sake, to give it everything possible, to place it on its father's social scale, not keep it on her own. She herself didn't suffer at all, for she had just what she wanted — the man she loved. Most women have a very possessive love, squeezing dry what they have. But Vergie wanted to give, not receive. There's the kind of woman who is the mother of men. not merely the mother of a child. Vergie gave her man everything, not only her life and then her child, but his career and whatever happiness he had known. Playing her I felt, for once at least, that I could be true to myself, for Vergie is the most beautiful character I've ever played in pictures." Feeling that so fine and serious an actress must have chosen acting from a serious motive, I was astonished when she gaily exclaimed: "I did it for a lark! After leaving the army post where I lived with my father, because I saw nothing ahead of me but marrying a second lieutenant, I went to New York and got a job as reader with a motion picture company. Then I wanted a change from office, subway and boarding house, felt the need of kicking over the traces and doing something wild and woolly and full of fleas, so I went down to Greenwich Village and carried a spear at the Provincetown Theater. I didn't think it would last more than two weeks but — well, here I am!" "How long have you been in pictures?" "Five years." "And how long do you plan to stay in them?" "As long as this face lasts," she laughingly replied, giving it a playful punch. Your hands express your personality. If you want to know what yours indicate, send a stamped, self-addressed envelope to the Beauty Editor, Tower Magazines, 55 Fifth Avenue, New York, N. Y., for circular HANDS AND PERSONALITY 60 The Neiv Movie Magazine, March, 1935