Picture-Play Magazine (Sep 1928 - Feb 1929)

61 Mothers Boy Grows Up Barry Norton, whom the fans remember for his bit in "What Price Glory?" is now being given roles in keeping with his sophistication. A By William H. McKegg YOUNG English aviator, with a somewhat angelic expression on his erstwhile sophisticated face, stood before a German firing squad. He gazed at a bird wheeling aloft. The command was given. He fell. There were more sniffles during this pathetic episode in "The Legion of the Condemned," than any other part of the picture. In fact, Barry Norton's performance was the high light of the production. Maybe you saw, and shed a tear or two, over the death scene of Mother's Boy, in "What Price Glory?" It will not be held against you if you did, for the scene was meant to have that effect. A smaller picture, "The Canyon of Light, " presented Barry Norton once again in a sentimental role. And, sure enough, to stress the sentimentality, he was forced to repeat his death scene. It seems that, at this moment, no one can die on the screen like Barry. Paramount realized this when they borrowed him from Fox for "The Legion of the Condemned." If you ha've not seen this picture you should, if only to see how pathetically Barry can expire. Besides this sentimental attribute, he achieves some excellent acting, too. "My luck has changed," he exclaimed recently, as if freed from slavery. "In nearly every picture I've played in, I've had to die. I'm killed off before I can see the girl, let alone stay alive longenough to get her. Now, in 'The Four Devils' " This change of luck occurred when Barry was cast in "Fleetwing." It is about the desert, and in it Barry is a young Arabian prince, or what not. Sentimental roles are O. K.," Barry admitted. "I hope it means I am versatile when I put them over all right, but to-day I have a chance to branch out into other parts. Now in 'The Four Devils' " Three years ago Barry came to Hollywood, after a two years' stay in New Alfredo de Biraben — the name he was Barry Norton, right, with his brother, Marcel, in the breakfast room of their childhood home in the Argentine. No, not Barry in the role of Lord Fauntleroy, but Barry at six years of age. is still energetically fulfilling it. His real name was never meant for electric lights, so Fox changed their newcomer to Barry Reid. No sooner had this appeared on the bill boards outside the studio, than it was altered to Barry Norton. As such you know him to-day. For five years Barry has been in America. "My life in the Argentine helped me a terrific lot in pictures, do you' know," he has explained more than once, sounding very English. "My constant riding, in the country down there, made me a good rider. I can fence" — one has but to regard his thick wrists to know it — "and twice I went by airplane from Buenos Aires across the Plata to Uruguay, to attend the national football match. So one might say I had good training for pictures, in my native land. Now in 'The Four Devils,' for instance York. He was then known as en at his christening, in his native Argentina. Several months in the film Mecca finally earned him a sudden break of surprising luck. Fox gave him a contract, and he Until his seventeenth year he did have good training. He went to an English school down there and naturally, speaks English as fluently as Spanish and French. At seventeen, he sailed with some friends for New York, but failed to return when they did. His adolescence was spent in absorbing the wisdom of the Great White Way. So it really is a remarkable