Photoplay (Jul - Dec 1931)

Charlie's been having microphone trouble. This fighting look you saw on his face in "Body and Soul" is just a reflection of the way he is tackling the problem. After a honeymooning absence from the screen, young Mr. Farrell is out to prove to the world that he is a star in his own name Charlie Has To Fig-ht/ MILLIONS of words about ** V ^ ^ ° ^ Charlie Farrell have thundered and tinkled over the typewriters of the nation in the past few months. His tender romance with Janet Gaynor, his happy marriage with Virginia Valli, his honeymoon rambles in Italy — all have been bathed in adjectives and dried with the turkish towel of adequate publicity. What the word-mongers haven 7 said, in all the mooning about his love-life, is that Charles Farrell, the wedding trip over and the rice all combed out of his hair, faces the fight of his life in the picture business. Little Caesar Microphone, plus the fateful chances of studio policy and expediency, have put Charlie "on the spot." Right now, back in Hollywood with the lucky little woman, he faces the battle of his century to hold, consolidate and make more resplendent the stardom he won with Chico in " 7th T-eaven." Few know what and how Farrell has had to fight, and has to fight today and tomorrow. He told me. It wasn't a confession — there wasn't a hint of a pettish whine or excuse. It was a plain statement of fact. " 7th Heaven" made Charlie and Janet Gaynor stars, but it did more than that. First, it shackled them as a picture team, and labeled them as Farrell and Gaynor, Unlimited Dealers in Screen Sweetness. Second — oh, fatal tag — it hall-marked them as Young Lovers for ever and a couple of weeks. Both have been squirming, and are struggling to this day, to grow into the mature, vigorous parts that they hope to get. Now the team has been torn asunder — the kids are on their own. And that's easier done than made to stick! We — and the men who show pictures in our theaters — are very apt to deny, with screams and arm wig-wags, that half a loaf is better than no bread at all. If we can't get the whole loaf, Gaynor and Farrell, all sweetness and light, we're apt to say we'll eat cake, and amble down the block to another bakery. And that's not nice, for stars or company, either. That's just one tough angle. Here's another: There's the voice, and if you think that's all skeer and bittles, you should hear Charlie tell it, as he sits with his lanky legs draped over a chair arm and his eyes roaming across the continent, 3,000 miles to the struggle on the set in Hollywood! 30 ard Hall T , „ „ . . I cornered rarrell in a luxurious Park Avenue hotel — one of those gilded joints where the doormen are dukes, and no one below the rank of lieutenant-colonel in the Bulgarian Horse Marines can get a job hopping bells. The new missus was out walking the bankroll along Fifth Avenue, where every shiny shop is a dare. And Charlie got philosophic and reminiscent. "Until I heard my voice from the screen," said Charlie, gazing speculatively out at the Rolls-Royces, "I never knew it was high. Furthermore, no one had ever said so. "I'm a Cape-Codder, and folks up there are inclined to speak with something of a nasal twang, and in the upper registers. But off the screen nobody had ever commented on my voice, and I got plenty of shock when I heard it in my first talkie." THAT'S another cross Farrell totes on his broad and competent shoulders. He's laboring with his pipes day in and day out, working to bring his speaking voice from a high tenor to a middling baritone. It's dollars to corn-plasters he'll ask you, hopefully, if you don't notice a change for the lower since he gave us a bit of a turn when we heard him in "Sunny Side Up." There's still another thorn in Charlie Farrell's rosy crown. Charlie may be only half of Gaynor-and-Farrell of Sweetness, Unlimited, but just the same, Charlie is a Name — a solid draw among the susceptible young ladies who tear down the theaters where his pictures are shown. It's no secret that Fox, for whom Farrell toils, is zealously — even ferociously — trying to develop more feminine stars to glitter in their line-up. They want the girls — need them, in fact! And how does a picture company hopefully launch stars of the feminine persuasion? Well, one way is to push them off the dock. The other, and better, is to nudge them toward the public as nominally supporting a well-known masculine name — such as Charles Farrell. The ladies' parts, you know, can be judiciously padded and built, and the completed film will sell on the strength of the young gentleman's name and at the same time introduce the lassie, in a plump and succulent role, to a world made up of chronic Missourians. [ please turn to page 122 ]