Silver Screen (Feb-Oct 1935)

to appear even more graceful with a little home practice. Then there are the hats which demand hours of study in tiltings and tuggings. You won't believe it when I tell you that Charles Laughton is a charter member of the practice fraternity. He told me a few weeks ago that he spent eight months pouring over documents and portraitures in the libraries, museums and old palaces of England before he made one scene for "Henry the VIII." He won't consider doing an historical character for the stage or screen unless he is permitted just that much time to study every gesture, reaction and idiosyncrasy written down by historians or caught by an artist's brush. At the moment he is buried beneath a deluge of material on Louis XVI, for "Marie Antoinette." M-G-M must wait to start this production until Bing has found that the most difficult trick to turn for the screen is crooning and looking romantic while he croons His early singing was directed to a microphone, but now it's in the direction of the colony's most beautiful blondes, and there's a vast difference according to Bing. So, nightly, Dixie sits beside Bing, or she hangs over the piano, and Bing practices the nuances of love's young dream, while still remembering to breath correctly, to hesitate after each lyrical phrase, and to enunciate clearly. And if you don't think that's a big order try it in your own music room some night. And then there is little Helen Mack, who packs away more emotional talent than Hollywood's current brace of foreign stars. Helen's practicing is necessitated by the fact that the studios seldom deal out a big juicy dramatic role to her. Because she is only five feet tall, she's classified as the perfect ingenue. Well, Helen knows that she isn't an ingenue, and that she will lose her sure-fire emotional ability if she doesn't do her "homework." So-o, Helen puts a record of "The Rosary" on the phonograph, then steps right up to a mirror, and practices sobbing and crying. She believes that even a fool proof emotional role can be ruined if an actress doesn't know her p's and q's about sobbing. Letting tears flow is a tricky business, and Helen realizes that she has a natural flare for it. If you saw her sob scenes in "The Lemon Drop Kid," you'll know that practice has kept this youngster "tearfully" perfect. Just because I love a good flashy contrast, let's put Carole Lombard under the microscope next. The calm, cool, casual Carole has her practice mania too, and it's CLOTHES. She's the only girl out this way who will truthfully admit that she likes that title "best dressed woman on the screen," and works hard to keep in the running. When Paramount's designer, Travis Banton, completes a new screen wardrobe for her, Carole takes each gown home several days before she wears it on the set., and practices in front of triple mirrors for hours. In this manner she discovers how to sit, walk, and lounge in each costume, to show off its best points to the best advantage. At the moment she's absorbed with the frocks she is to wear in "Rhumba." Some of them have treacherous trains, which require concentration, others have flowing sleeves which can be made Franchot Tone cured himself of the habit of putting his hands in his pockets. The master microphone W buster, Bing Crosby, and his very critical son. Norma Shearer can work, but, by then, the thorough going Charlie will have read up every available book written on the jellyspined monarch. And Norma, who will play the ill-fated "Marie Antoinette," opposite Charlie's weak-kneed Louis, recently joined the perfectionists. The faultless Norma now contends that hands can be more expressive and more important in screen acting than faces or voices, but these appendages must be trained rigorously to make the grade. Therefore Norma practices pianoforte finger exercises daily to develop limberness and grace of movement in her wrists and fingers, and maybe that's the real reason Irving Thalberg had that sound-proof room built in their home. Of course, everyone knows that Jeanette MacDonald takes a singing lesson every day of her life, but only a few of the inner circle have learned why she must have one free hour before dinner every night. We'll let you in on the secret. That hour is spent before the mirror of her dressing-table, where she hits high C again and again, while carefully scrutinizing her face as she does so. Jeanctte says that all singers arc taught to soar to the upper register with head thrown back, and mouth wide open, a combination that photographs the first stages of a tonsilectomy. So the canny MacDonald, through grinding practice, has perfected a new method of smacking those top notes without causing her lovely face to crack up into a Grand Canyon effect. And now I have one to tell on William Powell, and maybe he won't like it, but it's too good to keep. Bill takes a daily workout with a metronome (you remember, [Continued on page 73] for February 1935 2 3