Silver Screen (Nov 1936-Apr 1937)

The S creen Has ReacKeJ /\ A/lore Cultured Point In Its Development/ AnJ N ow Every V/orker In HollyvvooJ Is ProuJ Of The Orandeur And Beauty Of The WelU Eoved A4ovtes. The biography of the Master Painter, Rembrandt, will be told on the screen with Charles Laughton in the role of the great artist. LET'S Beat THE Drums THE amusement page of the New York News is spread before me, and the advertisements, 1 think, are something for the movies to cheer. At the Strand Theatre is advertised "Anthony Adverse"; at the Astor Theatre "Romeo and Juliet" is playing; at the RKO-Palace is "Mary of Scotland" and at the Plaza Theatre is "Green Pastures." In those four advertisements is proof positive that Hollywood has thrown olf its s^vaddling clothes and become adult in taste and culture. It is a long cry from the custard and slapstick of early Hollywood to this— a long cry from Mack Sennett bathing girls, and William S. Hart and Pearl White and Thcda Bara, to William Shakespeare and Hervey Allen and Marc Connelly and Irving Thalberg. So let's beat the drums for Hollywood, sound the alarums and flourishes and let there be public dancing in the streets, for the silver screen, \vhich has made several tentative stabs at culture, now definitely takes its place as one of our most cultured mediums of expression. The movies at last have come into their inheritance, and the im]Dortance of the stage is still further diminished, because in the handling of these four important pictures, Holl)^vood has demonstrated that even the pundits of the Theatre Guild can't compete with the scope of the lens. In moving into the higher brackets of taste and expression, ho^vever, the movies arc demanding more and more from the screen patrons. When "David Copperfield" and "Midsummer Nii;lit's Dream" came to the screen, book stores and libraries througliout the country reported that the demand for these books was tremendous. Movie fans, before going to the theatre, wished to acquaint themselves with the stories if they had never rend them, or refresh their memories if they'd read them years and yea is ;ii;o. The movies novv are an insistent spin to literary cultiuc. diictily responsible for this twentieth centiuy freshening of interest in Shakespeare, Dickens and even the Bible. The result of all this is rather astonishing, of course. Inasmuch as Norma Shearer. Katharine Hepljitrn, Fredric March and Freddie Bartholomew ha\e become, through repetition, common denominators—the pages of Shakespeare and Dickens from now on will forever be peopled with these modern images. School children, reciting "Romeo and Juliet," will have in mind Norma Shearer as Juliet and Leslie Howard as Romeo. Whenever ihev read of Mary, Queens of Scots, she will emerge in their imagination as Katharine Hepburn. And Charles Dickens foreverniore will be the man who wrote the story about little Freddie Bartholomew. Literary and historic values have been brought up to date, and modern faces substituted for the characters that streamed out of Strat ford-onA von. Now this, in every wav, is a great boon to literature. True enough, the great writings of great masters need no modernizing influences, but in putting fiesh and bones on the ch.ii;Kicrs in their books, and wiiiiii.; them for sound, the movies haxe liccn of incaU iilable \aluc. 1 lie a|)|)reciation of "Romeo and |ulii t " was enhanced for me when 1 saw Katharine Cornell on the stage. Watching her dark beauty, listening to the ap|)ealing Cornell voice, I could understand the ]:)urcl) plnsital reasons a Romeo would clamber up a ladder to woo her. Mov ie fans, seeing Norma Shearer in the role of Juliet will expciiencc the same reaction, just as ^irls, sicino Leslie Floward in the role of Romeo, will get a dearer and deeper explanation of Shakespeare's immortal love story. The same reasoning holds true in the modcrni/ation of Dickens. Although he relied less on Shakespeare's fantasy in creating his characters, and lluv < ime out as moic solid portraits, the sympathy for David Co])|n i Ik hi becomes more acute when you picture him as Freddie B;n t holoniew. And vour inteiesi in the great masters of |iainling will be stimulated when voti see Charles LauglUon's porlraval of "Rembrandt." [Conliniifd on fxinc 68] for November 1936 29