Picture Play Magazine (Mar-Aug 1927)

No Hidden Sorrows for Syd 19 suite of rooms, to be exact, hung with pictures and furnished with antiques. There are soft carpets and curtains, and there is a whole library of books on stagecraft, technical lighting and —yes, there are a lot of them, too, on wit and humor, much as I hate to admit it. And of course there is a phonograph. "There is something about the vibration of a waltz in the early morning, during the zero hour before going on the set, which simply won't let you be low-spirited," said Syd. Who would ever think of Old Bill as being aesthetic ! The phonograph somehow led us to the subject of music as a scientific method of curing disease, and we almost got highbrow, over it. But Syd saved the situation. "If you can find a musical vibration," he chuckled, "that a microbe doesn't like, he will either die or leave you, won't he? Can't you imagine a solemn-faced old doc with a library of jazz tunes to set the measles microbes crazy? And just suppose a little microbe doesn't like classic music, and the patient doesn't, either, and they both have to listen to it just the same." I could see that Syd was willing to get funny about anything in the world except comedy ! But we simply had to get down to business. "What is the future of comedy?" I demanded sternly. "Character study," answered Syd promptly. "All Dickens' characters, about whom the fans haven't time to read nowadays, should be shown on the screen, whether we call them Dickens' characters or not. "Of course we shall always have a certain amount of slapstick, because people love it. But all our comedy directors are becoming psychologists ! Nowadays the comedy directors and 'corned} constructionists,' as the gag men are called now, get together and talk psychology and physiology. They have even worked out a psychological and physiological way of taking a pie in the face ! They wonder whether certain sensory nerves, when irritated, would cause you to fall on your knees or forward on your face. " 'If you hit him near the pituitary gland, which is about here,' says a gag man, 'he falls forward suddenly, but if you hit him on the Among his dogs he finds pleasant relaxation from the ardors of the comedy lot. Syd, who has to be constantly thinking up new gags for his comedies, keeps his mind fresh by taking plenty of exercise. The success of Syd's Old Bill in "The Better 'Ole" is evidence of his theory that the future of comedy lies in character study rather than slapstick. deltoid muscle or the serratus magnus, he goes cross-eyed and takes a slowfall. Now the question is, do you want him to fall suddenly or have a lingering fall?' Or words to that scientific effect. A little different, isn't it, from the old Keystone way, when somebody hit you 'on de bean wit' a brick,' and you did a 'brodie !' " That led us to the subject of how much more difficult comedv is now than it used to be. "The time is gone," said Syd, "when you sat solemnly through a drama without a single laugh, and laughingly through a comedy without a single tear. All the dramatic producers are putting comedy relief into their tragedies, and all the comedians are putting tragedy relief into their comedies." It seems that Syd has been browsing around lately in ancient books, and he got a couple of "nifties" from an old Egyptian obelisk, also a couple of gags from a Roman history. Jokes, it seems, are everywhere, if you only know how to look for them. Syd told me about some old wheezes he found lately in an ancient Greek comedy. "Human nature stays the same," he remarked. "One man in this comedy walked onto the scene and tried to sell another man a house. 'What is the house like ?' inquired the purchaser. 'Wiry,' replied the wouldbe seller, 'it's a brick house. See, I've Continued on Dase 97