Screenland (May 1943-Oct 1944)

Take a Picture, Darling! Continued from poge 53 bother with me, for nothing ever happened. The Pressmans noticed during the Nazi entry into Austria that trucks and tanks rolling in to occupy the country were all old and shabby, vintage of World War I. "We've often said that their use was an example of Xazi strategy," said Claudette. "They wanted the rest of the world to think they had no first class equipment, that they were taking a country with practically nothing but a 'superior race' of men." The Austrian shots reflect the excitement of the time, but Claudette's favorite pictures are some she made of Britanny fishermen. "Uusally when I was getting shots of peasants or other people in various European countries, I hadn't much time," she confided. "They wouldn't pose for me, they just kept on going, or doing what they were doing, and if I got something it was by good luck. This time, though, we were dow n on the pier watching the fishermen below, so we could talk to them first. "On the pier were two old men, one 86 and the other not much younger, sitting there looking on. 'We're old. We don't work any more,' they said, but we could see they were dying to get down among the fish again. I have their pictures and those of the fishing fleet enlarged for my album." The album has other enlargements, too, scenes in the marketplaces of cities and towns now under the swastika, then little havens of peace. "Look, here are some snow scenes I shot in the Tyrols where I attended the famous school for ski-ers. That school was the finest in the world until it was closed by the war, and I learned all I know of the art there. Do you know, when I made my first Sun Valley picture, I couldn't ski, I could only skate, but now I'm not so bad. This is my teacher. When the Nazis went in, they put many of the boys at the school into concentration camps, but a number got away and are over here now. My teacher is in this country, I'm happy to say." "Nazis are clever but not as clever as they think they are," she observed, taking a much-handled postcard from her bag. "Toda.. I had this card from a British prisoner of war in Germany. How it got out is beyond me ! He asks for my picture and says that the last film he saw before leaving England was 'Arise My Love' ; he thinks of it often and hopes the sentiments expressed in it are as widely held in America as they are in England. I suppose to the censors 'Arise My Love' sounded like a romance, not a story of a newspaperwoman covering the war !" If she hadn't gone on the stage, Claudette would have been an artist. She was studying art when she got a part in a play as a gag. She expected to go back to sketching, but stage success prevented. Ever since then, she's thought : "I must get out my charcoal — I believe I could do something with that face !" She worked in charcoal and water colors, never in oil. Somehow she never actually got out the charcoal and her pictures remain in the might-have-been. Hollywood became camera-conscious. Camera fiends told her that theirs was a short cut to art. So when she took a roundthe-world trip some ten years ago, a camera sounded like an easier way to get pictures than dashing about with an easel, palette and brush. "I got a little Leica and ran about clicking the shutter industriously," she remembered, "but I found that camera a complicated affair, not very handy for a girl unless she is an expert. Men seem to enjoy working with them and love the fast lens. "Look, I stopped a horse in the fourth race !' or 'I stopped a train at top speed !' the\' tell you. and they don't mean they halted the things at all ; they only took a picture of them without blurring. "My results weren't especially good, and it made me nervous to try to see what I was getting with my eye jammed close to the finder. So when I went to Europe four years ago, I got a Rolleiflex. You can look right down into it and focus it by turning a knob until you can see what you are taking clearly. "You have to be clever to succeed with a Leica, but no matter how stupid you are, you can get a picture with a Rolleiflex !" Dr. Joel Pressman, husband and companion on the European trip, is a camera enthusiast, too, but he handles their home movie outfit as a rule. Now and then he tries his skill with the Rolleiflex, and one result of this effort is a picture of Qaudette with a white goat made at Bluebeard's Castle. "These are the ruins of the castle of Bluebeard, the fairy-tale monster who killed so many wives," recounted my hostess. "We had such fun that day ! The white goat came out while we were shooting pictures and the doctor said he was the ghost of the old man himself. Up there is the window where Sister Ann sat and looked down the road to see if Bluebeard was coming — remember ?" If you are a candid camera fiend and can't help taking pictures, take good ones or don't pester your friends to look at them, is Claudette's urgent advice. "There's nothing duller than looking at poor snapshots. Your victim is at your mercy and he lias to endure it. You usually feel a little guilty, so you start out with an apology : 'I don't think I got the focus quite right on this one,' you say, 'but if you look hard you can see that this is a man down here in the corner, and that's a — let's see now, Jack, can you remember if this was the dog Lucille had with her that day, or is it the kitten their little girl was playing with?' Lots of fun for the victim ! "If you show your prints, show only the ones you're proud to show. Saying which I produce this mountain view taken through a train window while the train was speeding!" She laughed that choky little laugh you like to hear from the screen. "At first on the trip, every time we saw what I thought would make a good picture, I'd cry-: 'Oh, stop! Wait a minute, I want to get this. It's glorious !' So we'd stop and I'd fuss around with the camera and move up or down or back and forth and keep the car waiting. Finally my husband said firmly : 'Look, now, are you making a travelogue ? Or was it in the plans that we get to our destination some time this month?' That explains the shot through the train window. "These pictures are souvenirs I wouldn't like to lose. I hope, though, that I'll never have to look through heaps of pictures of my own country, America, and feel as I do about the ones I took in Europe." "You're Done Your Bit — Now Do Your Best!" BUY MORE WAR BONDS AND STAMPS ! This is the time she should feel sjnk ■ but its her secret! THE functional discomforts of menstruation — "blues," headache, cramps — seem so serious to some girls and women, yet so slight a handicap to others. 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