Photoplay (Jul - Dec 1931)

talk and made the British pretty sore. Anyhow, you sent them a check. It ought to have pleased them to get that kind of an autograph, eh Charlie? BY the way, is the Duke of Connaught, King George's uncle, still peeved at you ? Nice old chap. What if he did wait an hour? Do those fellows good to cool their heels once in a while. That situation at Nice must have been a laugh. You know, the one where the thirty European correspondents came to see you and the hotel manager came down to talk to them instead. I can just see those fellows couldn't get the joke of it all, as they grabbed their hats and canes and yellow gloves and walked out in a huff . Ha! Ha! That was funny. You certainly turned the tables on the newspaper boys that time, Charlie. I have heard, though, that those European journalists haven't got such a sense of humor. Were you kidding those other newspaper fellows when you said you liked Algiers and would like to live there? Now, wouldn't you look funny running around in a sheet the rest of your life! Your pal, Jim DOUG, Jr., rushed into the story department the other day and said, "I've just written a swell yarn. Want to hear the plot?" Well, they didn't much, but they listened while Doug told his story in bare outline, giving it no time nor place. Ten eminent story doctors listened earnestly and when he was through they all shook their heads and said, "No, that story isn't any good — too episodic, too . . . well ... it just isn't any good." Doug made his way to the door and stood with his hand on the knob while he said, "Well, somebody thought it was good. The story I've just told you, gentlemen, is the plot of 'Hamlet.' ' Doug believes that the cuts the inkwells left on his cheek will be healed by the time you read this. EXTRA! They're going to stop making gangster pictures. Sure they will — when the public quits going to them. PERHAPS you have never heard of Donald Beaton, son of WTelford Beaton, editor and publisher of The Film Spectator of Hollywood. You would have heard a lot of him if he had not, at the age of 21, died an untimely death recently. A talented chap, with a flair for good writing, sound criticism, and clear thinking, he was building into one of the finest minds in pictures. Our sympathy goes out to his parents. In what pitifully little time you had, Donald, you earned our admiration for yourself and your work. 2R THERE was an evening of (to me) rare entertainment at The Art Centre of New York recently. The topic of the discussion was "What the Movies Are Doing to Our Architectural Consciousness." There's a box-office title for you. A group of serious art-minded folks, several hundred of them, gathered to hear a studio art director answer the charge of architectural bad taste in motion pictures, and they went after him like a committee of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union putting a bootlegger on the spot. The art director was explaining why, in talkies, it is impossible to build in ceilings on the sets because they interfere with the acoustics and the free movement of the cameras and microphones. For instance, he said, they once built a ceiling and Ernst Lubitsch, the director, ordered it out. "May I ask who this Lubitsch person is?" asked one of the discussers, "and may I ask what was his architectural training that justified him in ordering it removed?" T went on like that for hours. And all the time a dignified old chap in evening clothes kept leaning over to me, utterly regardless of the discussion on art. He wanted to know if Mary and Doug were really going to separate. He wanted to argue that Greta Garbo was a much finer actress than Marlene Dietrich. He volunteered that Joan Crawford was his favorite actress, and asked why he didn't see more of Anita Page. He was one of America's foremost architects. HE was particularly interested in the marital future of Mary and Doug, neither of whom he had ever met and both of whom he admired. "Well, it's too bad if they ever separate," he said, "but it is their business, anyhow. Folks who have lived their married lives in the spotlight for ten years, as they have, seem to have done pretty well to stay together that long, and I'm for both of them whatever they do." THE old chap put the whole situation pretty well. Doug and Mary are genuinely fond of each other, and, what's more, have the utmost respect for each other. The white flame of love cannot burn at full intensity year after year in Hollywood, any more than it can in the quiet precincts of Kansas. Let's hope that in Europe they are permitted to have a little moonlight together, instead of the torturing glare of the front page spotlights. PLEASE! Please! Mr. Producers. Can't we see Jean Harlow as anything but a gangster's sweetheart or a slithering seductress? And wouldn't her parts get over just as well if she wore a few more clothes? She always looks like a picture from one of those phony "art" magazines that are barred from the newsstands in some cities.