Picture-Play Magazine (Sep 1928 - Feb 1929)

71 1=1 I ■ m m r ' f _ ■ • a ^Elza S dialler t exception of "I'm Forever Blowing Bubbles." Instead of using the words "They fly so high, nearly reach the sky," he sings "They fly the sky," leaves out a line, and lets it go at that. And nothing will induce him to change this purely personal interpretation. straight Hamilton Veers to Comedy. Because he has always been such a serious, forward-looking chap on the screen, one would never suspect that Neil Hamilton was gifted with an abundance of comedy talent. However, it is by now a well-known fact that it takes only a single picture to bring out an actor's latent qualifications. And the film that seems to have done the trick with Hamilton, better than any other, is "Three Week-ends," starring Clara Bow. We saw this at a preview, and it's bound to bring Hamilton into popular demand. He plays a young insurance agent who, in his efforts to make good and to win Clara, goes through some very amusing experiences. Hamilton's ability to play the role with a certain well-defined intentness that has suited his more dramatic portrayals, seems to make it all the funnier. • Significance is lent to his success in this by the fact that he has been cast as Colleen Moore's lead in "That's a Bad Girl." When Sweet Sound's Deleted. The old phrase, "The face on the cutting-room floor" has been supplanted. The new one is "The voice on the cutting-room floor." It applies only in the case of Movietone, Phototone, and related devices, where sound is recorded the film. With Vita Williams undoubtedly is known to many readers of Picture Play 1 by virtue of his work in Westerns, but until a few months ago he was but a name for most Hollywoodites. Since playing in "Noah's Ark," however, in which he scored a hit, he has been signed for several other Warner features, and lias played in "Our Daily Bread," the F. W. Murnau production. A number of other companies are bidding for his -services. One wonders why, since he is now winning all this interest, he was not "discovered" sooner. It goes to show, perhaps, that the bigger producers are, after all, observant of only a limited number of stars and pictures. Williams has been on the screen nine years. More Local Color. What's good once is generally good twice. Hence a Metro-Goldwyn company now luxuriating in Tahiti, headed by Ramon Novarro, the object being the making of a picture called "The Pagan." Tahiti is where "White Shadows in the South Seas" was filmed, and that production is regarded as unusually successful. It could not be amiss, therefore, that another should be filmed in the same locale, from the studio viewpoint. "The Pagan" will resemble "White Shadows," to the extent that natives will play the minor roles. Aside from Novarro, leading actors include Renee Adoree, Dorothy Janis, a new "find," Donald Crisp, and others. Worst of all, according to the players' standpoint, is that they probably will have to eat their Christmas dinner, and celebrate New Year's in the tropics. Take it from those who went on the previous expedition, that is anything but an enlivening prospect. . A Lady in Distress; or, Lost in London. Gilda Gray, as she appears in "Piccadilly," a British film. on phone, the recording is done, of course, on a phonograph record, and so some other appropriate term will have to be invented for that. "Big Boy" Williams Clicks. Motion-picture careers are surely freakish. For instance, there's Quinn "Big Boy" Williams, who is suddenly attracting the attention of all the studios. ... "MM WmSmi: Senorita Cinderella. The flag of Mexico continues to wave very blithely over the cinema world, the reason being that another of her daughters is highly favored. The name of the latest find is Mona Rico. A rather chubby, nineteenyear-old girl, she is regarded as having unlimited talent by no less a director than . Ernst Lubitsch. She assumed one of the leading parts in "King of the Mountains," starring John Barrymore, and subsequently was awarded a five-year contract with United Artists. And the wonder of it is that she only had to work "eight days as an extra to achieve this recognition. Stars Become Recitalists. Olga Baclanova has a gorgeous contralto voice, ve proof of it not jo over the radio. and