Photoplay (Jul - Dec 1933)

120 Photoplay Magazine for October, 1933 THE* SMART. HOTEL* OF • M 0 C H • LOS nriOELES H. l€R€ is one hotel deliberately planned to offer the utmost privacy and luxury. Its quiet dignity and atmosphere of refinement appeal to transients and residents alike. • On Wilshire Boulevard at Commonwealth convenient to everything. Cuisine Unexcelled Continental Service 10¥N HOll/E LOS ANGELES 5252525252525252525^525252525; 525252525252525252525252 a 52 v 52 BE 52 52 2 52 a 52 52 52 52 52 52 52 52 52 52 52 52 52 52 52 52 52 52 52 52 52 V 52 NEED EXTRA MONEY ■ Then Photoplay can help you. We need wideawake represent' atives in your locality to handle our subscription business. You can establish a business of your own and earn an income which will help the "old budget". Be the first in your community to take advantage of this offer, and get started at once. A post card will bring further details. PHOTOPLAY MAGAZINE Dept.NEM-IO,919N Michigan Ave .Chicago, III 252525252525252525252525252525252525252525252525252525 Day-Long Beauty NEW, TRANSPARENT LIFE-COLOR LIPSTICK CCKIP> \r\,f FOR VANITY SET OtlNU IUV LIPSTICK 1 ROUGE 67 FIFTH AVE., NEW YORK fll\>iei\e s%lKestre Famous Film Flops ( PLEASE T1RX TO PAGJ i i ■.Gradual Mary Pickford, i Opera, Personal Development, Culture. ancea » hile learning. Fur catalog, B5lh SI., N. Y. la Mi DiUU-i'. *pr.-ch. Mn.l, ,1 < -I | 1 v . *U..ck Theatre I tj.ii.h.« aprtearwcilc S»c'v ERWIN, 66 Woat of the players, technicians and producers of pictures feel sure that the public is going to like their creation. In short, even when a film is obviously a dud, it is only rarely that anyone, in the course of its filming, has courage or authority enough to stop the slaughter and proclaim the whole enterprise just a basket of over-ripe tomatoes. In most cases, the movie producers do not know whether they have a success or failure until you — the public — tell them. Sometimes two master minds get together and produce a failure. Mary Pickford and Ernst Lubitsch would like to forget "Rosita." After the success of "Passion," a foreign-made sensation starring Pola Negri, Mary decided that Lubitsch must be brought to this country to help Mary gain a little sophistication. " Passion" was the first great German movie to come to these shores and, after its successful showing, sophistication was in high demand. Mary, who is a clever girl, had a little mental lapse when she figured that a director who could do right by the smoldering Pola was just the person to bring out the hidden allure in America's Sweetheart. Lubitsch, too, had similar illusions, and "Rosita" was made with the best intentions in the world. Heralded as a new era in Mary Pickfordism, it soon flickered into oblivion. But Mary and Ernst, being stout-hearted troupers, went marching on. Nearly every director or star, no matter how successful, has some picture that started out with the hopes of winning Photoplay's Gold Medal and ended up in the red, with dirty looks from the company's auditors. Even that miracle man, Mr. Charlie Chaplin, once made a picture that never earned its celluloid. And yet that picture, "A Woman of Paris," is numbered among the great of the screen. Charlie, you may remember, wanted to be a director, and so he concocted a Parisian romance about the figures of Edna Purviance and the then unknown Adolphe Menjou. The film was born too soon; the public wouldn't face the fact that illegal love has its lighter moments. So Mr. Chaplin lost money; but the obscure Mr. Menjou was skyrocketed to fame and gold. The public, while condemning the morals of the episode, just adored the nonchalant way in which Mr. Menjou went to Edna Purviance's bureau and, with the familiarity of custom, extracted a handkerchief. A DIRECTOR like Cecil B. De Mille has to **-go out of his way to produce a failure, but his prestige as a box-office expert received a setback when "The Godless Girl" went down for a loss. The film, purporting to show the abuses of reformatories, wTas too brutal, too harsh for public taste; especially for a public expecting only perfumed messages from Mr. De Mille. If the picture injured De Mille. it was still more harmful to Lina Basquette. since her hopes for stardom depended on her work in the title role. De Mille, by the way, was started along the path of perfumed messages by the biggest flop of his career, "Joan the Woman." This filming of the life and death of Joan of Arc failed completely— yet it sent its star, Geraldine Farrar, on to bigger film popularity, launched "I beg your pardon. I'm looking for tin.* mens1 room!