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September, 1931
Close-Ups and Long-Shots
By
James R. Quirk
THEODORE DREISER is all hot and bothered because he thinks the Paramount Company didn't do right by his "American Tragedy." What's eating him anyhow? It ain't art like his book, he says, and he goes into court to stop the company from releasing it.
Didn't Dreiser know when he accepted $150,000 for his long winded yarn — which I confess was an effort for me to read — that it was going to be made into a picture, or did he think the company was going to embalm it?
The picture — I've seen it — is ten times as entertaining as the book. Go see it and take your boys and girls. It will do them good.
GREATEST-Amazement-of-the-Month Xote : Conrad Nagel, pillar of society in the film colony, usher at a Hollywood church, leader in the Finer Things of Life, was being urged for one of the hard-boiled parts in a naval aviation picture to be shot on his home lot, M-G-M. But the director and supervisor pooh-poohed the executive who suggested casting Nagel.
"Nagel?" they scoffed. "That fellow can't do this tough guy role."
"Well, give him a test, anyhow," urged the executive.
When they told Nagel to take the test he exploded. Why, he demanded, should he who had played in pictures for years take a test on his home lot? Didn't they know how he looked and photographed?
"Take it, anyhow," soothed his friend. Nagel agreed, but boiling. His temperature wasn't reduced when he appeared for the test, and found the director and supervisor openly cool to him. He got into his costume, walked onto the sound stage. The director and supervisor weren't there — just the crew.
"Is the mike on?" asked Nagel, grim faced.
" Nope, this is just for camera, no sound."
"Turn on that mike," Conrad ordered. "This is going to be sound whether they want it or not."
They turned it on, started the cameras.
NAGEL glared into the lens. "All right now, you !" he
roared. "You thought I couldn't do this role, huh? You thought because I am not a drunken bum that I am a pretty little flower, did you? You so-and-so, you wanted to see how I'd look for this part, did you? Well, here I am and take a good look at me . . ." With that, he glared ferociously and stomped off the set in a genuine high rage.
Next day he was cooled. Too, conscience was biting him. He reported at the studio. The director and supervisor were waiting.
He saw them coming at him, and steeled himself for the worst. They descended on him simultaneously.
"Conrad!" they fairly shrieked, "Conrad, old boy, old boy, old boy — you were great! Simply swell! Marvelous!" And so on.
And he got the role.
And he wonders whether it really pays to try so hard to be a gentleman— a nice, good, clean-speaking gentleman — in Hollywood.
THE physical exertion Marie Dressier expends in some of her slapstick scenes — remember "Min and Bill," for instance?— sometimes frightens studio
officials.
Once, when she was working particularly hard, the director warned her.
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