Silver Screen (May-Oct 1939)

Silver Screen for June 1939 61 A.cting Means more to Them than Orchids and Polo Ponies [Continued from page 31] ng right away." He won high honors for lis etching of Louis Pasteur, but no Acad;my honors could equal the deep thrill ie received and still receives from the etters that rewarded him. In particular, there is one letter from i boy who was taking a medical course ind was about to drop it. Muni's dramati:ation of Pasteur fired the youngster's magination anew and exultingly he wrote :his to Paul. "Isn't that wonderful?" Muni asks you. "Perhaps that boy may De the one who will discover a cure for :ancer, or do something else in research work that will benefit millions of people," Do you think, for one instant, that in artist of this high type, stirred by a Doy's letter, acts because he needs money k is interested in money. If you do,' I 'eel sorry for your lack of depth. Take, if you will, the top-flighters of Hollywood who go to Broadway each year ;o appear on the stage. I am not referring low to those actors who are out of work m the Coast and turn to Broadway in desperation, but I have in mind such a itar as Fredric March. When a movie star of his importance sets sail for Broadway, he knows in advance that he will get the worst of it from the drama critics. March however went to New York and was unfortunate enough to appear in a flop show. You might think that the experience would have soured him. "It was a grand experience," he told me. "I'm going back next year with Florence again." So he and his wife took another shot at Broadway and the tremendous success of "The American Way" indicates rather conclusively that you can't strangle talent. Fredric March can command $150,000 for a picture. He can't get that kind of money on Broadway in less than a year, with eight performances a week. It is a tribute to his love of the theatre in all of its forms that March abandoned Hollywood for New York. The woods are full of performers actuated by the same ideals. The eager youngsters in this town who are not in the near-star class are just as resolute. They, too, are of the stuff of which troupers are made. No discouragement is too severe to jar them from their love of performance. They scrimp here and there to save enough money to take voice lessons to improve themselves. Opportunity may be just around the corner, and they want to be ready for it. You see them at local theatres drinking in the technique of a Bette Davis or a Spencer Tracy greedily. They sit through pictures over and over again to study such an expert veteran as Maria Ouspenskaya, and when Alice Brady played a dramatic role in "In Old Chicago," young actresses almost lived in the balcony to observe what she did with hands and face and voice. Cruelest thing that ever happened to the young players of the movies was the blast of the exhibitors when they singled out actors and actresses and termed them "box-office poison." The effect on the youngsters was as terrible as though a college paper came out in an editorial and stated that although the school football team was magnificent, it was not making money enough. "Katharine Hepburn is a fine actress," said the youngsters, "but evidently We are on the wrong slant. The exhibitors don't care if you can act, so long as you can make money." It hardened a lot of them, until it was pointed out that exhibitors did not always know what they were talking about, and that Bette Davis and Spencer Tracy were doing pretty well. A great colony, these actors and actresses of Hollywood with no common denominator to aid in pigeon-holing them. Sensitive, high-strung, quick to respond to praise or heckling — they remind me of the mettlesome colts that face the barrier in the Kentucky Derby. The colts are bred for racing; these humans are bred for make-believe. Not many of the colts entered for the Kentucky Derby ever reach the starting line; not many of these humans will ever reach stardom. Just as thoroughbred horses will run as fast and as gamely, not knowing that a purse of $100,000 may depend upon their efforts, so also these actors and actresses would work as hard and labor as valiantly if there was no pot of gold, at1 the end of the trail. Acting is in their blood and their greatest prize is the acclaim of their peers for a part wellplayed, a line well-read. BUCK UP, BOSS ! i'm still for you! STOP MOONING AROUND, BILLPATCH THIN6S UP WITH SUE! YOU CAN--IF--WELL--WHY dontyou SEE YOUR TESTS SHOW THAT MUCH BAD BREATH COMES FROM DECAYING FOOD PARTICLES AND STAGNANT SALIVA AROUND TEETH THAT AREN'T CLEANED PROPERLY. I RECOMMEND COLGATE DENTAL CREAM. ITS SPECIAL PENETRATING FOAM REMOVES THESE ODOR-BREEDING DEPOSITS. AND THAT'S WHY... 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