Photoplay (Jul - Dec 1940)

THERESHO CATCH TO THIS SAID THE FISHERMAH Surprise Ending What, no whales?" said Jerry, laughing at my empty creel. "Well, just quit jiggling your rod for a minute and sweeten your temper with a taste of Beeman's. That's real flavor, my lady. Refreshing enough to change any fisherman's luck!" "Beeman's!" I cried, "jerry, you angel — you know I can't resist it. Beeman's flavor is so luscious! So smooth and tangy. Refreshing as a breeze at sundown. And look — ! " But Jerry was already reeling in my line — with a whale of a catch! I'll say Beeman's brings me luck! After meeting Bette Davis and seeing her at work one feels that she is possessed of a real and enduring flame, one not to be confused with a neon substitute. Perhaps it was meant to be that I should learn something of the art of motion-picture making by watching how such artists as Miss Davis, Mr. Boyer and Miss O'Neil achieve their characterizations. These seem so natural and effortless when we see the final results that it is difficult to realize all the infinite pains that lie behind them. But to see and hear scenes rehearsed and repeated, line by line, and gesture by gesture, under the direction of a man like Anatole Litvak, has been a revelation to me. The work of a writer seems almost easy by comparison with the precision and fine shadings which form the mosaic of detail that goes to the creation of a motion picture. I was impressed most of all by the patience required for this medium as I watched those three . . . Miss Davis, Mr. Boyer and Miss O'Neil; as I heard them going over and over their lines, trying this or that barely perceptible difference of emphasis to bring new meaning to some speech or scene. To see what an actor like Charles Boyer can do with a shrug, a lifted eyebrow, or a sudden significant pause was more illuminating to me than anything I have ever read on the art of acting. And there is this difference which a writer like myself is quick to notice and admire. It is not enough for an actor to project himself into the part he has been chosen to portray. An actor or actress who achieves success in any role must also leave the stamp of his own personality upon it. The character must also be charged with his or her own vitality. Otherwise it becomes merely a carbon copy of the original and might as well have been left between the covers of a book. nHEN you were a child perhaps you played with dolls, as I did, disguising the look of the doll by this or that change of dress. But the doll's face and expression remained the same, the difference of character being all in the clothes. In my experience of seeing the characters I had created come to life on a studio set, the effect was exactly the opposite. I recognized the robes, or rather the roles, but different faces had been inserted. It did not matter to me that a person I had described as blonde should be brunette, or vice versa; that a face I had visualized with certain features should have materialized into something quite different. When the actor or actress spoke or moved with the spirit I had felt when I put his part into words I had no difficulty in recognizing him, however such minor details as color of hair or eyes or shape of features might have been altered in the process of casting. Other writers may have been less fortunate than I in this respect. Certainly few can have fared as well as I did in the screen adaptation of a novel. Dire warnings had been whispered in my ears about what could happen to books when they were recast into final form for "shooting." "You won't know your book," people told me. "Be prepared to see it butchered and twisted out of all recognition." So I tried to be prepared for the worst which may be the reason why I was rewarded with a happy surprise. Knowing little or nothing of the problems that face an adapter of material to (Continued from page 37) the screen, I had had only vague ideas of what changes would be needed. So I was amazed to read Mr. Casey Robinson's script and find that in spite of the necessity for compression and shifts in time and scenes he had kept as closely as possible to my original in spirit, in characterization, and even in much of the dialogue. Often I was surprised to see how cleverly he had combined certain chapters. I marveled at his skill in weaving certain seemingly unrelated scenes together without a break being apparent in the continuity. I hardly missed certain bits that had seemed essential to me in the writing, and that must go to prove that writers of books can often learn a lot from taking notes on the successful pruning of their manuscripts. IT is, of course, a little strange to find that certain characters that seemed necessary to the story can be dispensed with completely, while others can be reshaped from minor ones into important characters, more interwoven with the plot than a writer ever expected them to be. There was old Pierre, for instance, a loyal, amusing old servant in a lodginghouse. I haven't realized what possibilities there were in him until I Those four children in the quaint, authentic costumes of the period make an appealing group, like miniature figures from French fashion plates of the 1840's, when little girls wore bell-shaped skirts and fitted basques and round hats perched on braids or curls; when little boys like Raynald wore pantaloons and velvet jackets and tasseled boots and ruffled nightgowns. Even the Paris nursery-schoolroom of that time has been lovingly re-created down to the smallest furnishing and knickknack. I sat there and marveled at all that I saw about me, and I longed to transport that room just as it was to a corner of my home when the picture was finished. Every detail had been studied and reproduced, from wallpaper and curtains, to the toys on the shelves . . . French toys and games of another generation, an old Noah's Ark, a gaily painted merrygo-round and a Victorian music box, shaped like a grand piano with ivory keys fantastically inlaid on the top of the rosewood case. I happen to collect old music boxes and I know a real one when I meet it. So it was all I could do not to wind the key and hear it play then and there. Beside me were the children's desks of antique walnut. I wanted to sit at one and dip a quill pen in the old Margarita Cansino, renamed Rita Hayworth (via movies) — and Mrs. Edward Judson (via marriage to the oil mogul seen with her at Ciro's) saw how much more effective he had become when he was transferred to the Due's household as an old family retainer. There his shrewd comments to the heroine lifted him almost to the role of a Greek chorus. Harry Davenport will bring his fine gift of characterization to make the role even more important. The four Praslin children, as I said, have unusually long and important parts to play in "All This, and Heaven Too." Gene Lockhart's daughter, June, will play the oldest girl, an eager, sensitive type, full of adolescent qualms. That young "veteran," Virginia Weidler, will lend her talent and quaint looks to the part of the humorous and independent sister, Louise, while charming little Ann Todd will be the youngest girl. Raynald, the frail, precocious baby of the quartette, seemed almost impossible to cast. Yet, when I saw him in the person of tiny Richard Nichols and heard his serious small voice speaking the lines, I felt that he had walked straight out of the pages of my book. I should have known him for that little boy wherever we had happened to meet. fashioned inkwells cast in the shape of brass hands. On the screen I suppose they will only show for a second or two as the heroine and her four young pupils act their parts in that reconstructed Parisian schoolroom on a Hollywood studio set. But at least I shall know that they are real and as old as the story in which they, too, play their parts. Yes, it is something of an experience to see one's book leave its printed pages and come to life before one's very eyes . . . almost as strange as writing about a legendary great-aunt in the first place. Each time I go over to that set and see the people I described in words moving about in flesh and blood, it is a curious, but happy shock. I find myself thinking how not so long ago I was driving through the Berkshire Hills to revisit the little town where the heroine of "All This, and Heaven Too" spent so many of her American summers and where she is buried, and how strange it is that now I am driving over to Burbank in the California sunshine to see how she and the rest are living briefly again all these years afterward. 68 PHOTOPLAY