Photoplay (Jul - Dec 1936)

94 PHOTOPLAY MAGAZINE FOR JULY, 1936 EVEN THE Aibolene A pharmaceutically pure and delicate solidified mineral oil that acts as a SKIN PURGE! It's no secret that certain well-known scientist reformers do not approve of most cosmetics. For years they've been scolding and jeeriiif; our frivolous feminine ha hit of put tin;; things on the face. B T — even these stern critics agree on the benefits of pure, safe mineral oil used for skin cleansing. And, for once, women see eye to eye with cold science. For thousands have discovered Albolenc's benefits as a skin cleanser too. Its pure delicate oils really penetrate into the pores, soften and float out impurities (with much the same effect for which we use them internally) without leaving the slightest residue of animal or vegetable waste matter. The result is a clear, clean functioning skin, in the language of specialists. A Ix'tm liful skin, its real meaning. Of course, you'll keep on with your usual cosmetics. (It would take more than science to make us forego their charm!) But do try removing them by ibis simple, pharmaceutical formula. Formerly available only through doctors and hospitals, tbc makers have now decided to offer it directly l<> you. Through your druggist al 50c a large jar — SI for a professional pound tin. If you would like an ample test supply, send I his coupon. ■ MAIL THIS COUPON TODAY! ■ ^w please print plainly ^^ McKesson & robbins, fairfield, conn. Manufacturing Chemists since 1833 Dept. P-7 Please send me a generous sample «>f Aibolene Stdid. I eiicloHf 10c lo cover postage and handling. /Vii/ne . Address City County _State_ My most convenient ilritg store is_ and the many complicated little elements that go into the fusing of a successful gag take serious skill. Stan Laurel, surprisingly solemn in his silly make-up, is a shrewd student of comedy technique. Even though he is not in the scene we watch, Stan consults director Harry Lachman, looks through the camera, and advises about lighting and timing. Hardy, who acts the boss in the pictures, sprawls comfortably in a corner, not concerned the slightest with any of the mechanics of production. "Our Relations" is Laurel and Hardy's most ambitious undertaking. The sets are lavish, the one we visited being an out-door night club built on a beautifully decorated ship. In the film, both Stan and Oliver have dual roles, being twins. The picture sounds as if it will be very funny, but making it, as we have said, is something else. Our mad dash around the lots completed, we hop into our crate to get away from what is known as It All. Three and a half hours driving brings us to Palm Springs, just where we planned to go. The first people we meet are Dick Powell, who tells us he's in the desert for his sore throat, and Frankie Albertson, who's out in the country just for the ducks of it. Inevitably, we get to gossiping about the studios. And in fifteen minutes we get so homesick for the glaring lights that we want to go right back to Hollywood to find out more about the studio life for you. The Private Life of a Talking Picture [ CONTINUED FROM PAGE 57 ] these trips, when there is nothing to do in the evening but to stroll about in the moonlight and fall in love. The jump from locations to music is an abrupt one, but you're asked to make it now. There are really two major phases in scoring a picture: first, the songs and orchestrations used in the story itself, and second, the background or atmosphere melodies played to give color and meaning to certain scenes. Metro's conservatory is located in a squat concrete building on the back of the lot, and consists mostly of library. There in a highshelved triangular room are stacked nearly a million standard orchestra selections, and every phonograph recording ever made; it is the most complete collection of its kind in the United States; and from this office stretch the lung fingers of a gigantic copyright department whose duty it is to seek out the owners of tunes and buy the right to play them. Grouped around the conservatory are rehearsal rooms and audition halls — the special composers' offices are located in a separate building far away from noise and chaos. This department has three main duties: to discover and train singers and musicians for work in the movies; to write, arrange and play the popular songs you will later hum at your work; and to complete the musical setting that is blended into the sound track after all the other work on a picture is finished. For the first of these tasks a school is maintained, with noted composers and musical show conductors on the faculty. They choose well known professional artists and train them for work before microphone and camera — amateurs are out. There has been only one notable instance where a beginner stood any show at all, and he was a ditchdigger on the studio grounds who sang at his job. Victor Baravalle, head of the M G-M department, heard the laborer's glorious voice swelling upward from the new dug pit; he exhumed the man and the voice, coached both — and Albert George is now carolling his triumph to snooty opera crowds. Baravalle, Dave Snell (whose realm is jazz) and Herbert Stothart, consider quality, trueness of tone, flexibility and technique when earching fur talent. They adapt the key timing and harmony to suit a star's capa bilities, and dramatize otherwise casual songs so they will tit the subtle moo. Is of a sequent < The best songwriters and arrangers in tinworld are brought to Hollywood, along with the best blues singers, the best crooners, the best dancers. You know that, already; and you know the result: the splendid musicals the screen brings you. But greatest of any job Baravalle and his group of workers have is the incidental melody that heightens immeasurably the emotional effect of any love scene, of any battle scene, of any race or chase or quarrel. It takes four days to score a picture. On the first, a conductor runs the film over and over in a little projection room, making notes the while as to what music is appropriate for what setting. Once the second, an arranger chops and slices and orchestrates the melodies according to footage, so a cooing love strain won't run over into a business office scene or stop too abruptly. On the third, Metro's private equipment prints the sheet music — whether for a band of six, or for an aggregation of forty-eight men. And on the final day they rehearse and record, timing beginnings and endings with a stop-watch so that all mood-interludes will fit with mathematical precision. THE V go to great lengths, these people, to supply the exact musical temperature for your subconscious as you watch a picture in your theater. They import native Hindu, Egyptian and West Indian orchestras so the effect will be genuine; they use as many as ten or twelve different bands for one movie; and they buy instruments never heard before by modern civilization. In "The Merry Widow" one Gypsy group used a viola da Gamba, and several other ancient instruments such as wood winds known as Serpents; and a number of other obscure arrangements played with padded hammers or with the lingers. for the deepest of bass notes M-G M has constructed a groat tuba capable of tooting two octaves lower than it< ordinary brothers: a horn so big it must be supported by a permanent iron frame, with the other pieces grouped around it. Leaning backwards in the other direction, this department has even secured an Aeolian harp which is played by the breezes vibrating its stril it wails a delicate, fragile harmony tinged with infinite sorrow, . . . But before you may at last sit in your little plush seats and hear this music or watch the picture, there must occur all the multiple processes of development . of editing and cutting, of preview. Briefly, when film leaves