Picture Play Magazine (Jul - Dec 1929)

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When The}> LoVe Out Loud June Collyer has her own ideas of the voltage power of spoken love scenes versus silent ones and lets us in on some secrets. By Laura Ellsworth Fitch THERE was a time when sheiks of the screen could recite their laundry list, college yell, or telephone number in a love scene, and the sheba could reply with a dreamy memorandum of her grocery list — and it registered as torrid as a Dorothy Parker poem. But that was hefore Warner Brothers. Now they're making love with real words and music, and if you think the technique isn't just too different for anything, it's because you haven't talked it over with June Collyer. June's the girl who knowrs. In the first place her recent pictures have seen and heard her opposite Buddy Rogers, Richard Dix, Conrad Nagel, Walter McGrail. George O'Brien, and other thrillers. . On top of that, she's rumored around Hollywood as the leading lady they really get a "crush" on. And why not? June is as pretty and charming and debutantish off the screen as she is in the shadow. Thanks to her favorite brand of cigarettes and her sense of humor she misses the ingenue class, but is well up in the category of our very nicest girls. Buddy Rogers has made no secret of liking June an awful lot. Nor was Richard Dix immune to the play of her dimples during "The Love Doctor." Another gentleman used to write poems to her between scenes. Still another sent flowers to her dressing room daily. Is it any wonder I became curious and asked June co take me to lunch, so that I could ask her whether or not the natural style is cramped by having to speak the other fellow's love lines, and if there's as much inspiration in loving out loud as there was in the silent days ? She wore a cream-lace dress, with a large picture-hat. and looked fussed when I brought up the subject. "Oh, it's different, all right," she admitted and "acted nonchalant," as advised by the cigarette ads, "but I don't know whether it is more inspiring. "You see. love scenes in dialogue arc really very ticklish to handle. You have to be so careful not to make them silly. If they become too glowing, the audience laughs and the romantic effect is ruined. There is only one phrase in love-making that an audience can tolerate without feeling self-conscious. That is 'I love you.' When the hero launches into some glowing account of how madly he wants the heroine, or extols the beauty of her eyes, for some unaccountable reason it sounds terribly silly. "Because of this. I think talking pictures will be the swan song of the very passionate love scene. When it was silent we could use our imagination about what was being said. But when they try to fit words to match the action it becomes faintly ridiculous. "Maybe you have already noticed a tendency toward lighter love scenes in the talkies. I think they are trying Photo by Hesser When June Collyer is engaged as leading lady to a masculine star, he is almost sure to fall in love with her. to suggest rather than demonstrate. The fewer love phrases that are used the more convincing the scene. especially if there is a beautiful song running through." June laughed. "Heaven knows what would have happened to the love scene if the tin me song hadn't stumbled along. It has helped us out oi more than one tight spot. People will believe and feel music, where words leave them cold." But it wasn't the reaction of the audience that particularly interested me. What ahout the players themselves? Wasn't it vastly inspiring to have the lover actually sounding his emotions in his deepest and most Vitaphonic appeal ? June crinkled her nose in a characteristic ruood. If a pretty girl could make a face that was it. "Do you think it would he particularly interesting to hear your hoy friend recite some other man's thoughts while making love to you? You would feel that you were acting in a play, wouldn't you? That's almost the feeling we have. Certainly nothing very personal ters in. "The picture I have just finished with Budd} R is a perfect example of what I mean." she said. I hope you haven't forgotten what 1 said ahout Buddy and June really liking one another. Tt rather hears on what she said. "The name of the picture is •Illusion" and we have a beautiful love scene. The setting is A marble bench — a quiel lake — a sloping lawn — moonligl ning clothes music in the background. And the dialogue some one so kindly wrote for us was sweet. ( tainlv everything was conducive to romantic feeling. vou'l'l admit. But was it? -inn..!. pagi 115]