Photoplay (Jan - Jun 1931)

i48 Pin Money For Our Readers PHOTOPLAY now offers its readers the opportunity to convert their spare time into real money by becoming its subscription representatives in the town or community in which they live. You, as a reader of Photoplay, will be quick to realize the money-making possibilities this offer affords you. Your friends — your neighbors — in fact, all the homes in your community— are prospective subscribers for PHOTOPLAY. Who, today, is not interested in moving pictures — the chief recreation of the American public? Be the first in your community to take advantage of this offer, and get started at once. The coupon or a post card will bring further details. Name. . Address. City Photoplay Magazine for June, 1931 alone. She puts no faith in lit ctin^ fame. Her picture work gives her no thrill at all. Her name in electric lights? — well, what of it!-' She had that thrill when she first played on Broadway. It won't come again, at least not in Hollywood. She doesn't like Hollywood nor the Hollywood attitude. She realizes she has only a lit lie moment of glory on that diver sheet. She's in the game for (he money and, of course, she's glad when she does a good picture. Hut there arc other things so much more important to her than pictures and she feels sorry PHOTOPLAY MAGAZINE, Dept. RE-6-31, 919 No. Michigan Ave, Chicago, 111. I am interested in your money-makinp offer to your readers. Send me the details at once. .State. for those poor women who are in the octopuslike grip of the studios. Fame and work are not her gods. For she has Frank Fay and when they've both made enough money they can go to F.urope to live as they please and have a couple of children. Occasionally, if Barbara feels like it, she could do a play in London and bring it into New York. She could afford to take a small salary if the play were good. In this way her life would be rich and full and she doesn't care if she never sees Hollywood again. With Skippy on the Set [ CONTINUED FROM PACK 29 peculiar child psychology — that readiness to slip over into the world of phantasy and believe it real — they were easily convinced that the cruel dog-catcher had actually killed the dog-actor they had grown to love. Naturally, the dog was kept off the stage and set during these scenes, so that his presence would not spoil the childish sad illusion. Moreover, when the child actors were first introduced to Clifford, the actor who played the dog-catcher, they were told that he was mean to dogs. That he had really killed dogs. The campaign was so successful that Robert came to a publicity man one day and said: "Say, do you know what I know. Mr. Clifford has killed over a thousand dogs already!" IT was hard for Clifford to take it — because Clifford likes kids. And it was no easy task for him to go about under their reproachful gaze until the picture was ended, and they were told that he loved dogs and, instead of killing them, owned several. They had a hard time getting the fight scene between Bobbie Coogan and Jackie Searle, who plays the "sissy" boy. Searle is anything but a sissy, actually. He can outrun, outfight, outplay any of the other hoys in the whole show at any boys' game! But in "Skippy," he's the meanest, nastiest, tattletaliest sissy that ever breathed. In one scene, Robert Coogan had to fight him. But they had played together, and Robert, with the obstinacy of five years, wouldn't do it. His fight scenes were very, very artificial. "You've really got to hit him, Bobbie," ordered Coogan perc. "I can't. I like him," Bobbie answered, simply. Coogan, Senior got an idea. He recalled that long ago, Jackie Coogan used to call his kid brother "chicken." Robert hated it. So Father Coogan went to young Searle and whispered in his ear. On the next take of the fight scene, as the cameras started grinding, young Searle — as clever a child actor, by the way, as Mitzi Green, and as good a trouper— yells at young Robert: "Come on an' fighl now, you li'l chicken'.'."' Robert's rage rose instantly. "You call me that again an' I'll bust you!" he defied in that high soprano. "Yah! — Chicken, chicken, chicken . . ..'" teased Searle. And without further ado. tears of rage in his eyes, five-year-old Bobbie sailed into him. It was a swell fight scene. Paramount cutters were only sorry they had to slice out the part where Searle goaded him by yelling "chicken!" Jackie Coogan, young man now, was on the "Skippy" set only one day. On that day. he tried once to tell his kid brother how to do a scene. "Say," drawled the young Coogan, "I wish you weren't even here!" Jackie was kept away after that. Of course, the business of rewarding the children was also used, at times, besides en raging them or making them cry. For one thing, the still cameraman, Gordon Head, is a genius at making toys out of scraps of tin and metal. He was used more than once as a come-on — like this: "Xow, Bobbie, if you do this scene good, I'll have Gordon make you a boat," Taurog would say. And he'd get a swell shot. Another time, Taurog bought two boat models at a fancy price from some Mexican peddlers because the children in the cast liked them. The boats were held up as prizes for the child who did the best work. Cooper is a strange lad. Seven years old, he has the mentality of a boy of ten. He thinks out his acting more than the others who played in the show. One day his mother was seen whispering into his ear, while they were getting ready for a sad scene. Then young Cooper went into a corner by himself. A publicity man, curious, went over and talked to him. "What you doing?" he asked. "Thinkin' sad things," said the boy. "Why?" "My mother told me I gotta cry in this next scene, an' I'm trying to make myself feel sorry, so I'm thinkin' of sad things," explained the seven-year-old. "What sad things?" asked the press-agent. "Oh, things of my own," said the boy. By the time he went into the scene, whatever he was thinking of had young Cooper half in tears already. Searle and Mitzi Green — no need going into much about her because you know her so well already — were the best "actors" among the children. Bobbie Coogan was least actor of all — save for his heritage. This was his first work. It was all new to him. Taurog and the others don't yet know whether that made their task easier or harder. TXCIDEXTALLY, Bobbie is unlike Jackie J-that way. Jackie was old enough while his parents were still on the staze to absorb the atmosphere of play-acting. Bobbie, born after his parents had quit, and after his brother had passed the peak of his fame, never came into close contact with acting. And his work in "Skippy" is even the more remarkable for a fact not so generally known. He was a premature child. He weighed but five pounds at birth. Of course, he gained quickly — at ten months, he weighed twenty. "He was always a healthy baby," his mother insists. But the fact remains that because of the handicap of his premature birth, his progress was not that of a normal baby. For instance, he did not begin to utter intelligible words until his fourteenth or fifteenth month. Most children can talk sentences well before then. Bobbie did not walk until he was fifteen months. Most babies walk long before that age. But in "Skippy" — well, if Bobbie Coogan couldn't walk or talk before his fifteenth month, then many daddies and mothers would be perfectly willing to have the same delay with their progeny if they could become the grand little youngsters that Bobbie is on the screen at five years.