Photoplay (Jul - Dec 1931)

THE stories of Aladdin and Sam Alvvein are a lot alike. Aladdin was a poor boy, wasn't he? Well, so was Sam. He was born over on the East Side of New York. He lived in a three-room tenement with his mother and father and six younger sisters and brothers. About the time Sam climbed into the eighth grade, his father needed financial help so badly that Sam went to work. He got a job as office boy for Carl Feitelbaum of the Solar Films, just when moving pictures started to make millions. Carl took a liking to the boy. When he went to California he took him along, and when he picked up an old studio for the mortgage he put Sam in charge. The studio showed a profit the first year, and Sam was made. From that point on he gets to look more and more like Aladdin. True, he didn't have a lamp to rub. But he had a check book to write in. He didn't have djinns and genii and slaves to bounce in out of nowhere to grant his slightest wish. But he could hire almost anybody he wanted, to do anything he wanted. He wasn't a prince. But he was a Big Shot in Hollywood. Wasn't he president and general manager of one of the most important film companies? He even had a princess. Sam didn't need a lamp to find her, either. As a matter of fact, he found her while he was trying to put out a light, the light of one of his stars. The morning it all started, Barbara Henderson, Sam's best emotional star, refused to play the lead in a feature booked for immediate release. Sam sent for her. Barbara Henderson was blonde, cultured and poised. Success had assured her. She was beautiful and she moved into the room under its steady assurance. "Yes, Mr. Alwein," she said, and Sam was captured again by the husky voice that had held her fans to her after the advent of the talkies. Smiling, he motioned her to a seat and sat down himself. "T HEAR you don't like the new picture," he said. "What's JL the matter with it? I paid thirty-five thousand dollars for it. It's a best seller. It's got everything the public wants. Love. Sacrifice. A bad woman goin' straight." " My part is overshadowed," she told him. "The wife gets all the sympathy. People will come out of the theaters remembering her and not me. My public will be disappointed. They'll remember I've lost. I have only two big scenes, the one where I steal him from his wife, the other where I give him up." "This picture," Sam patiently pointed out, "is booked and scheduled for production. We've sold your name with it to the exhibitors. You got to play it." "No," she disagreed, "I don't have to play it. They have even cut my two big scenes, to put over the wife. And the dialogue isn't good. It couldn't be, even if Shakespeare wrote it." " Listen, Miss Henderson," Sam said. " Get this. I read one of Shakespeare's plays, 'Hamlet,' and that baby couldn't work 5-4 lg Alwein, the producer who always got what he wanted, thought he could make a star out of any beautiful woman By Charles J, McGuirk Illustrated by H. R. Ballinger on this lot. I got seven dialogue writers could put it all over him. Mavbe he was good in his day, but that was a long time ago." "Shakespeare," Miss Henderson told him, "was the greatest dramatist of all time." "Yeh?" said Sam. "Well, why ain't his plays sellin'? He's out of copyright and anybody can lift him. And when they do, the play's a flop. And listen, Miss Henderson, we ain't makin' pictures for highbrows. We're makin' pictures for the high school boy and girl and the tired stenographer and the business man and his wife. Virtue gets its own reward. A bad man or woman can't win, but they get all the emotional breaks. See? " " My public won't stand for it," she said. "Your public," Sam said, and his voice squeaked a little.