Photoplay (Jul-Dec 1938)

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TAKE YOUR OWN H OLLYWOOD— While the postman goes for a pleasure stroll and the chauffeur takes a spin on his day iff, what do you suppose the movie ■layers are doing in their spare time? Right! They're making movies. At their pools and parties, in their lurseries and rumpus rooms, at mounain hideaways, valley ranches and on tudio sound stages, 16-millimeter camras are recording the real story of lollywood life. The productions are carcely what you would call "stupenlous" or "colossal," even if they do have nillion-dollar casts. For the most part 'hey're definitely — even conspicuously ^-amateur. It's an amusing fact, and one that has iieen the subject of many a ribbing reel, hat veteran screen actors are likely to ie as self-conscious as anybody when hey face a small camera informally. Generally they smirk or wave. Caught n action — playing a game, picking flowjxs or doing anything — they'll mug and iveract with the zest of an ordinary iiam. Also they'll burlesque, in pantomime, iheir professional trademarks. Harpo lilarx may sink to the ground and twang he spokes of a bicycle wheel. Eddie Cantor rolls those eyes. Hugh Herbert inouths a silent "woo-woo." Martha itaye makes a face or two, then hoofs I measure for a close-up of those newly publicized legs. Bing Crosby does an mitation of Bing Crosby. Jack, the jiturdy Oakie, beats his chest — and toughs. Clark Gable waggles his ears ■ind Carole Lombard visibly enunciates 'i wisecrack, generally preceded by the •ubtitle, "Is there a lip reader in the iiouse?" i This is amateurism and they make the nost of it. Only rarely will anyone vork out a scenario, coax a group of iriends together and shoot a connected >icture. Hollywood celebrities usually hake miniature movies for precisely the name reasons that millions of other people do — to record the development of •heir children, to make animate albums )f their trips and parties and friends ind just to have fun. I HE stars have one exceptional opporunity — to shoot on the sound stages and mtdoor location sets. Many of them, Vlarlene Dietrich, Katharine Hepburn, iBasil Rathbone and Gary Cooper, to lame a few, have partial duplicates of :he more spectacular pictures in which hey have played. And all in color. , Nearly all studios have rules forbidding amateur cameras on the sets, but ,;tars and directors alike continue to use khem. "Sometimes," Rathbone confessed, ''I've even persuaded 'juicers' to put a ittle more light on some scene I wanted ».o catch with my camera. I hide under .ables and climb up on the catwalks and .orobably am a great nuisance, really. "I'll never forget 'Romeo and Juliet,' vhich had such marvelously rich sets ;md costumes and yet wasn't filmed in i:olor for the screen. Metro tried to enforce its no-camera rule on that one, ;iut at least a dozen were used. There vas one embarrassed studio policeman whose job it was to confiscate the movie :ameras. He galloped after Leslie toward one day and it was better than i Keystone chase to see Romeo dodging Ml over the ballroom and finally hiding lis camera where the cop couldn't find t." Miss Hepburn's secretary or stand-in operates her camera while she's actually | n a scene. Tyrone Power and David ^iven get in everybody's hair when hey bring their amateur movie ma £>, Read about Henry Fonda's unreleased masterpiece — "The Siren of Skull Gulch" You'd think it the last hobby a movie star would pick, this business of emoting for an amateur camera. It's time you got in on the fun chines to the sets. Virginia Bruce, Margaret Lindsay, George Brent, Humphrey Bogart, Jimmy Stewart, George Raft, Louise Hovick, Errol Flynn and Jack Benny are other on-the-set color-movie enthusiasts. Jean Hersholt took eighteen magazines of film when he went to Callander, Ont., with the Twentieth Century Fox crew producing the current Dionne quintuplet feature, "Five of a Kind." Incidentally, he also has collected clippings of films in which he has appeared during his twenty-five-year career. These have been reduced to 16-millimeter size. Included is his first screen test — which happened to be the first test ever made. Jon Hall photographed almost the whole of "The Hurricane" on half-size film. Also, being a star-gazer himself when he became the hero of that picture, he photographed all visiting celebrities. Some of the latter got quite a start when they saw a stalwart young man, encumbered only by a sarong and a movie camera, loping toward them. Neither Clark Gable nor Robert Taylor makes movies at the studio, but the former takes full records of his hunting trips and a good many shots of Miss Lombard. Taylor mostly photographs outdoor action of his and Barbara Stanwyck's horses and the cattle work on the Porter Ranch in the foothills near his home. Whether wandering or working, the itinerant Errol Flynn usually is sniping away at something with his movie apparatus. A few months ago, when Flynn and Lili Damita were guests of John Vietor, Jr. at Palm Beach, a 16-millimeter impromptu featurette was made with a cast that couldn't be reassembled by the richest Hollywood studio. Howard Hughes produced and directed. Flynn was an American Indian who, with bow and arrow, stalked Atwater Kent, Jr. through the luxurious Vietor estate. Kent was a villainous white man who had stolen the redskin's sweetheart, Lili Damita. Other players were Paulette Goddard, Woolworth Donohue, Prince George of Russia, the Edward F. Huttons and Mrs. Marshall Dodge. Flynn's pursuit of Kent was frustrated when he was ambushed by a stout Tom Collins which had been hiding behind a tree. Miss Damita saved herself, though, by galloping away on Donohue and obtaining diplomatic immunity from Prince George. Somehow the whole thing ended, but happily, in the swimming pool. APPARENTLY everybody in Hollywood who has a child is making a sentimental film record of its growth and development. Pat O'Brien, George Burns and Gracie Allen, Harold Lloyd, Fredric March, Gary Cooper, Richard Dix, Dick Powell and Joan Blondell are some of the busiest photographers. Their films, invariably in color, are carefully edited and titled. A popular stunt is the photographing of a child in an almost identical pose at regular intervals over a period of years. Short clips of these shots, spliced chronologically, show a youngster actually growing up in a few minutes' time. Henry Fonda and Jimmy Stewart are 16-millimeter fans, but their supreme effort in comedy production was made while they were living together. That picture, tentatively titled "The Siren of Skull Gulch," introduced a tremendous cast with faces of the characters shown on a divided screen along with their names and roles. But these peopleHollywood stars, tramps, cooks, milkmen and street cleaners — never were seen again. Fonda was the photographer and Stewart played all the parts. As the cowboy hero, he'd shoot the villain; then, in villain's costume and make-up, he'd tumble off a roof. Again, by artful cutting, he might be shown as a salesman, ringing a doorbell, being admitted by a colored maid (himself) , greeted by the lady-of-thehouse (himself) and being chased out by a returning husband (still Mr. Stewart). LoUISE HOVICK, who is Mrs. Robert Mizzy, who was Gypsy Rose Lee, queen of burlesque and zipper-stripper of the Ziegfeld Follies, probably shoots more 16-millimeter film than anybody else in or out of Hollywood. It has been estimated that Twentieth Century-Fox could suspend production for a month if it might release the actress' own movies. And these would be pretty good entertainment, too. The Mizzys have a knack for finding amusing adventures, such as their transcontinental motor trip of a fewmonths ago, with Louise's studio dressing room as a trailer. It was hot in the desert, and Miss Hovick had to dunk her eight dachshunds in assorted flavors of cold soda pop to keep them alive. In Dallas, Texas, they stayed for a few days in the main city park where, guarded by policemen and roped off from the amused citizenry, Mrs. Mizzy cooked meals and hung out her washing. All such incidents are recorded in deathless celluloid. She has a film record of the Follies, color-photographed by her husband and with all the best jokes told in sub-titles. Her best, though, is a trailer to end all trailers. Staggeringly elaborate, it originally was supposed to advertise something, but she gave up that idea and offers it on its own merits as an epic. It's packed, as the titles admit, with Gals, GALS, GALS! It's also packed with Bobby Clark, Fanny Brice and — Gypsy Rose Lee. OCREEN tests offer another practical field for miniature movies. All of the studios are receiving reels from ambitious actors and talent supervisors are surprised that they haven't yet found any promising material through this medium. For the guidance of animators at the Disney Studio, 16-millimeter pictures in slow motion are taken of people and animals in action. Adrian, of Metro, takes his own color movies of costumes he has designed for stars. At least two Hollywood technicians have established prosperous businesses as minnie-movie photographers of weddings and civic and commercial events. For that matter, Mary Astor used to photograph some of the surgical operations performed by her former husband, Dr. Franklyn Thorpe. Lew Ayres, still one of the busiest amateurs, began his comeback a couple of years ago by collecting a group of earnest but obscure players and filming a gloomy but technically remarkable 16-millimeter silent feature called "The Disinherited." It won paying jobs for almost every member of the cast and for Ayres a chance to direct "Hearts in Bondage." Since then he has been busy as an actor, but even his recent triumph in "Holiday" has not dimmed his ambition to be a director. 63