Photoplay (Jul - Dec 1936)

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Together we read every version of 'Juliet' ever printed, took the best passages from each, and built our script out of that. "We didn't worry about the censors. Since Shakespeare himself had had his characters make rollicking, bawdy remarks, we weren't going to ruin his immortal poetry by priggish interpolations and substitutions. "In the incredible 1460's men and women didn't always call a spade 'a utensil of special nature.' " K/ISS OLIVER snorted. Miss Shearer ' " 'grinned. Cukor paused for breath. " But 'Juliet' as a story," he resumed, "takes place in four days, in the course of which the headstrong young man forgets an erstwhile sweetheart and discovers Juliet, daughter of an enemy house. "They fall desperately in love and are married. He kills her cousin, Tybalt, is banished to Mantua, learns that Juliet has died, kills Paris in her tomb and then dies beside the bier. That's a lot to happen in such a short space of time. "And to meet the demands of the public for reality, for events that seem possible and credible, we had to prepare a good many explanatory scenes. "We, finally, hit upon the idea of ignoring all precedent and pretending that the ink was hardly dry on the manuscript; that this was the first time the play had ever been produced. That took away whatever inhibitions we might have had. " So far as casting was concerned; remember that Juliet has never been played by a girl lovely enough or young enough to give the impression of being sixteen. "At first the heroine was played by young boys because there were no actresses in that day. Later middle-aged plumpish women and heavy men with fallen arches simpered through the passionate, tender lines of the balcony scene. "I'm speaking from the popular angle, of course, and intend no criticism of the magnificent stage performances given by Katherine Cornell and others of her kind. Generally speaking, however, the stage casting was unfortunate. " Miss Shearer, here, is the first really beautiful Juliet. "Leslie Howard isn't a slip of a boy by any means, but I think the public would have howled if we had given them authentically adolescent players who had neither the maturity nor the understanding of life to read the lines as they should be read." I STEPPED on my tenth cigarette and lit ' another. Miss Shearer sipped at a bowl of soup. Miss Oliver sat listening rigidly. "Anyway, we had this problem; that America would not under any circumstances swal low the accepted melodramatic portrayal and the usual presentation of the play. Offering the story so that its effect might be one of reality meant a careful segregation of the prose from the poetry — too many actors have stood and singsonged the bits that Shakespeare meant only as explanatory matter. There's no ham acting in this production. As a result scenes that have had only a suggestion of power heretofore, now stand out in startling relief. "Thanks," said Miss Oliver, drily. Cukor ignored this. "The reason 'Juliet' is the one love story of the world that represents the very symbol of love is that it is completely genuine. "There was no coquetry in Juliet; she played no games and used no wiles. She saw Romeo, loved him, and didn't try to hide the fact. Vet the entire play gives the lovers only three scenes together — the rest of the story is told in terms of separation and anticipation. "I think from an educational standpoint this picture may teach the youth of the nation how to really love. They've watched the sordid games of gangsters' molls and of gaudy, glamorous ladies on the screen for so long that now the junior high school miss is almost incapable of anything but infatuation. She loses any real love she might feel in the artificial business of beating out the girl next door. "If pictures have caused that reaction in youth, then pictures can change that reaction. The love of Romeo and Juliet is so simple and yet so all-encompassing that it makes the typical 1936 affair of coy deceit and jealousy entirely cheap. "Anyway — the picture has taught me a lot, not necessarily about love, you understand" (the Oliver lips, parted for pointed comment, closed sharply) "but about my profession. I'm a thrice better director than I was a year ago, and the players are better actors. For one thing, they know how to speak English, now." I said, "Think so?" to Norma Shearer. CHE looked up. "Too right," she said. *-*" When we first came into pictures we spoke carelessly, nasally, with slurred consonants and loose inflections. "Then, after hearing ourselves talk on the screen, we leaned over backwards in an attempt to correct our faults. We took elocution and diction lessons. We broadened our 'a's'. We were so precise as to be stilted, and immediately lost all the value of what we were saying. "But you can't read Shakespeare in either of these ways. Vou can't be careless and nasal or the result is ludicrous, and you can't be pompously precise or the dramatic quality of the lines is gone. Vou have to speak the language in its true, perfect form. "And having learned to do that, you can give great power to the simplest sentence, whether it be in a classic picture or a simple modern story." Someone came up, then, to tell Cukor the "Square" set was ready. We drove out and watched them take, casually and in three minutes, the scene that ended the greatest job of his long and brilliant career. When it was over the extras and bit players lined up in the afternoon sun for their checks — wealthy nobles swathed in ermine and priceless jewels, jostling Nubian slaves and bishops. And when finally they had their money. one by one they came and offered their hands to Cukor. "Thank you so much, and goodby," they said. I'd never seen that happen at the end of any picture before. It tells you more about this particular director than I could explain in a dozen articles.