The New Movie Magazine (Jan-Sep 1935)

terson SHE cheats herself out of good times, good friends, good jobs — perhaps even out of a good marriage. And all because she is careless ! Or, unbelievable as it is, because she has never discovered this fact: That socially refined people never welcome a girl who offends with the unpleasant odor of underarm perspiration on her person and clothing. There's little excuse for it these days. For there's a quick, easy way to keep your underarms fresh, free from odor all day long. Mum ! It takes just half a minute to use Mum. And you can use it any time — even after you're dressed. It's harmless to clothing. You can shave your underarms and use Mum at once. It's so soothing and cooling to the skin ! Always count on Mum to prevent the odor of underarm perspiration, without affecting perspiration itself. Don't cheat yourself! Get the daily Mum habit. Bristol-Myers, Inc., 75 West St., New York. MUM TAKES THE ODOR >UT OF PERSPIRATION ANOTHER WAY MUM HELPS is on sanitary napkins. Don't worry about this cause of unpleasantness any more. Use Mum! Could the "Sheik" Win Hearts Today? {Continued from page 3b) accent is an asset of his personality — is among the high-priced male stars — $150,000 a picture, two pictures a year. Francis Lederer, who made women swoon when he burst on Broadway in "Autumn Crocus" and revived the cult of the matinee idol, has dark brown eyes that glow like open fireplaces, and that intangible, provocative something in his temperament that Valentino had — but not to the same degree. His screen career has not given him the opportunity to be the sensation among women that his two stage appearances in "Cat and the Fiddle" and "Autumn Crocus" provided. He was cast as an Eskimo by RKO in "Man of Two Worlds," a singularly inept choice for the young heat wave from Prague. Lederer, six feet tall, one hundred fifty pounds, has "it" and fire and the ability to excite by remote control, from across the footlights, ladies from suburban sewing circles, stenographers from Wall Street, debbies from Park Avenue, and co-eds from New England. He's 28. Give him time — and some good pictures. CORTEZ, Raft and LaRue are the villain-you-love-to-touch-you type ; and when they're heroes, they have about them a darkly sinister quality of brooding or actual mystery that gets the girls who like to guess and wonder — about the facts of life and the factors therein. Cortez, in particular, has a tearjerking quality that pulls women's hearts right out of their bosoms, a gift that insures his popularity with a large section of the more sentimentally inclined among women with deep-rooted maternal instincts intertwined with their romantic impulses. Freddie March, Bob Montgomery and the gallery of 100 per cent American real-guy types — Gable, Tone, Powell, Baxter, Bellamy et al — are all exceptionally versatile actors who have played in a variety of roles, living courageously, dying heroically, laughing and clowning through life, being misunderstood and too well understood, being victims of wiles and the wily users of same — all in all, the kind of fellow who bobs up everywhere in America. You see him at the country clubs, the beaches, in the Pullmans, the transcontinental busses, on the steamers and the ferries, in the trolleys and the de luxe roadsters. He works in a bank sometimes, in a gas station often; he's a small town boy and a big city fellow. He's a cross-section of American male, this type. When he's glorified in the movies he's every girl's ideal, for he's the prototype of her adored brother, her football hero, her fiance — and always, the husband she'd like to have. English stars who have won American women fans are Leslie Howard and Herbert Marshall and Ronald Colman. Howard, a great actor, with a delicacy and strength, with a spiritual quality and physical charm, with sensitiveness and wit, has won a following that is as much intellectual as it is average. That, in itself, is a tribute. Marshall's appeal is also on the side of acting and charm — charm of an evanescent, undefinable quality the very mysteriousness of which makes him alluring. When America was in the grip of prohibition and its attendant evils, when the gangster was glorified in movies because he represented a contemporary part of American life and was attrac tive even when he repelled, American women took to Edward G. Robinson and Jimmy Cagney. Both of them symbolized brute strength, ruthlessness; maleness rather than masculinity, a quality still appreciated by American women who like their men to be men. They were so evil on the screen, these two, that they were attractive. They brought to life in movies the men whose dark deeds were being scrawled across newspaper headlines daily. They injected into life that fearsome quality that makes home more attractive and causes endless speculation about the evil doers. With the virtual passing of the gangster on the heels of prohibition those qualities of rugged strength which had caused Cagney and Robinson to be selected to push people around, take others for rides, and go trampling roughshod on laws, conventions and life generally, were translated into more heroic, normal roles which in Robinson's case have been definitely inspring and thrilling and, in Cagney's, on the lighter, more humorous side, intensely amusing and entertaining — the tough guy with the heart of gold who gives the bully his come-uppance. The movie makers found that Robinson's ruthlessness would fit nicely into stories of earlier, ruthless Americans who pioneered in the creation of America as a great nation out of a wilderness. As Cagney is the embodiment of the independent middle-class young American, both these stars mirror a new and more constructive phase of life in these United States. Valentino, wherever Valhalla is, must look upon the divided loyalties of women and find Valhalla even more satisfying. Two and three and sometimes four thousand letters a day came to him, from his faithful' fans, back in those early days when the screen had only one hero whose name was Valentino. Why? The answer is very simple. He gave the women what they wanted, what every woman everywhere wants. Romance! "It is inherent in all persons, that desire," he said once, "and lacking in almost all lives. I understand that desire and I give to those who have it, release from sorrow, from pain, from boredom. I give them Romance, those who come to the darkened theater seeking in the shadowplay a little moment when they can get away from the harsb realities of life. And that is why they will never find my successor. It can't be done." HE may have been truly prophetic, realizing perhaps that he symbolized an age that would pass with his passing, that era of the nineteen twenties, an age that was acutely romantic in its post-war desire to find in superlatives of joy, of freedom, of life, of love, a complete panacea for the black horror that had befogged all lives remotely or intimately touched by the war. So for Valentino, in Valhalla, the toast: "Le Rot est mort" must finish there ! No one can add, as is done when a king passes and his successor steps to the throne — "Vive le Roi." There IS no new king to wish a long life. The toast is complete only when it is halved. It is a fitting epitaph, its finality a tribute to the one screen lover who meant all to all women. 38 The New Movie Magazine, July, 1935