Picture Play Magazine (Sep 1928 - Feb 1929)

21 Returns vocal discords perpetrated in the bringing Pauline Frederick back to voice will delight the fans. Reid duction, then in rehearsal and plans. Warner Brothers' is the only sort of picture arrangement I would consider now. It allows me eight films in the two years, and freedom to accept stage offers between them." Insatiable in her appetite for work and more work, she looks forward eagerly to the two busy years ahead. She is even formulating vague plans for a theater of her own, to be maintained during her picture work. "It is a fallacy that all the good actors are in New York. Right here in Hollywood we have some of the finest troupers in the country." Her idea is for a stock company composed of carefully selected players, whose film engagements shall alternate with their picture work. Miss Frederick, with her vast knowledge of the theater, would stage the plays, with the exception of those in which she herself appeared. Her followers hope she can carry out the plan. "No one person is capable of holding down two jobs without doing one or the other, or both, badly. Naturally I know when I am giving expression to an emotion, but I am incapable of knowing whether or not the result looks as it should. Players should not have too many illusions about the extent of their power." If Miss Frederick has any, they are not visible to the naked eye. Her remarks about her work are casual, and her answers to questions brief. It is apparent that her chief interest is in the profession itself, not in her personal share in it. The adulation she receives everywhere, the enthusiastic demonstrations with which audiences greet her appearances, are gratifying to the star. But gratifying in the sense that her company is receiving appreciation. Even then it is never "my company," but always "our." Her return to the screen is particularly auspicious at this time. No actress of the Frederick caliber is visible on the film horizon and, with the coming of talkies and the crying want for voices to go with the silent faces that did well enough in the past, her presence is a relief to at least one apprehensive producer. No need here for either elocution lessons ior some shrill-voiced beauty-contest winner, or frantic manipulation of cameras to beautify some stage player who sounds better than she looks. Talking pictures were invented for such as Pauline Frederick, whose beauty is now supplemented by the audibility of her rich voice and pure diction. But Miss Frederick herself is less sanguine. "When I heard my first Vitaphone test, I wanted to rush out of the studio and buy a black beard, go that no rhoto by Fryer There is nothing of the tragedy queen about Miss Frederick, for she is humorous and direct, and though one is prepared to revere her, she makes one like her tremendously instead. one should ever recognize me as the perpetrator of such a voice. It is a far from flattering experience." The Warners, however, felt differently about it. and it was with no small joy that they obtained her signature. They bowed gracefully to any demand she might care to make, even that she conclude her tour with her play, which does not leave her free to begin pictures again until May. This initial Vitaphone, "On Trial," is Miss Frederick's first picture in two years, with the exception of one made in England a year ago. She finds conditions greatly changed. "Before, it was a nice business which you could comfortably understand. Now, it has become a process of black magic. I am as lost in admiration as a child. It is marvelous. You speak your lines, and a few minutes later you go into an ante-room and listen to your voice on the wax print. And in the projection room you watch this moving snapshot of yourself, and it speaks with your own voice. I feel a little like a conjurer, and the business is sheer legerdemain. "The microphone itself is a terrifying thing. At first I had to fight against a very callow self-consciousness Continued on page 103