Photoplay/Volume 36/Issue 2/Close-Ups and Long Shots

by James R. Quirk

The National Guide to Motion Pictures

[TRADE MARK]

PHOTOPLAY

July, 1929

Close-Ups and Long-Shots

By James R. Quirk

THE talkies' saddest tale, and that of a horse!

According to Tom Reed, the cameras and microphones were all set to record that saddest of all partings between a hard-ridin', clean-souled son of the Old West and his li'l pinto pony.

"Good-bye, ole pal!" said Ken Maynard, with a noble look. "Many's the year we've spent together out thar on the lonely plains. And now it's good-bye, ole pal!"

Then it was the ole pal's turn, and everybody looked at the horse expectantly. But ole pal was stuck. He positively couldn't whinny an answer. Maybe he didn't even try. Maybe he had joined the Doug Fairbanks' Academy and gone snooty. But no answering whinny from ole pal.

So there was nothing to do but send for a double, with a guaranteed whinny, and to try to get the big farewell scene again!

DR. HARRY M. HALL, President of the West Virginia State Medical Association, is not afraid to give credit where he feels it is due. His is the first letter I have ever received from a physician praising the technical treatment of the roles of screen doctors. He says:

It may be of some interest to you to know that in a conversation with some members of my profession they expressed themselves as highly gratified to be able to report on the general excellence of "Interference" and "The Doctor's Secret."

Medical men, I think, have kept away from motion pictures, not through any feeling of being "high-brow" or hard to please, but because life, for the most part, comes to them in rather a high-powered way, and so much is really thrilling in their everyday life that they, naturally, cannot abide a weak or colorless plot.

In addition to the above, they have seen their own profession treated in such a grotesque and altogether unsatisfactory way by many motion picture directors that they felt the other callings must get similar treatment. For instance, it took the movies some years to get rid of the Van Dyke beard nonsense.

The two medical men in "Interference" and "The Doctor's Secret" are simple, straight-forward men who do not toy with stethoscopes, thermometers and the like.

To the exacting, there may have been a slight error in the "Interference" performance. As far as we were concerned, we did not detect it, so lost were we in the absorbing recital.

THAT men in such an ideal, dignified, and altogether professional manner was a delight to every doctor I have heard speak about it.

The English doctor, of course, goes in for the silk hat effect more than does his American brother. One sees our American medical man in a light-grey suit with a soft hat or a derby, and he has the same easy dignity that matches them. But the sartorial question is of small importance.

The medical profession really owes a debt of gratitude to the actors, directors, and makers of these two pictures. They portray, on the screen, the type of mellow, rounded-out, seasoned man every doctor would like to be.

The two types depicted by the actors in these two movie dramas would be an inspiration to any tyro. We were sorry you did not mention Clive Brook in your "Best Performances."

KLANG PICTURES, a German company, is now rushing into the production of talkies. There's a delightful name for sound pictures.

AS expected, the snipping of our old friends, the censors, is raising thunder and lightning with the talkies.

Gentle Chicago, that center of all civic sweetness and light, has banned "Alibi." The shy censors of Chi say that the theme of that excellent melodrama—conflict between gangsters and the police—is too shocking for the tender sensibilities of residents of the machine gun belt.

How "Scarface" Al Capone must be laughing.

A SILLY thing happened in Cleveland. And yet it isn't so funny, for it's a perfect example of the crucifixion of a talkie.

Censors there are allowed to cut scenes, but not dialogue.

So they chiseled out several scenes in Clara Bow's "The Wild Party"—a sound-on-disc picture.

Thus, when the screen went black, Clara prattled gaily on.

Naturally, the crowd gave Clara, the picture and the censors a loud and merry laugh, while the management wept and cussed.

And the legal eagles, no doubt, looked upon their work and saw that it was good, noble and uplifting. The pure and honest peasantry of Cleveland had been saved!

YET, lo and behold, from Kansas comes the news that the Attorney-General of the State turns in an opinion that censors have no legal right to exercise their cunning arts on the sound tracts or discs. That from Kansas, mind you.

FEAR of the new form of entertainment seems to have deprived the stage managers of their sanity.

Going about the country is a pamphlet, issued by the Association of Theatrical Agents and Managers. The motion picture interests, it says, have succeeded to a startling degree in destroying the legitimate drama, depriving the people outside New York and other big cities of the right to see the recent legitimate dramatic and musical successes.

WOULD you, it asks, have your children shape their character ideals from what they see upon the screen?

The talking picture, it screams, is but a machine that will put a million people out of work.

Sign on the dotted line, it exhorts; take a lease on auditoriums, school halls, Y.M.C.A. assembly rooms, and see how all good 100 per cent Americans will flock to see the road shows we will send you.

CAN you imagine how excited the cultured patriots of Kalamazoo will get, trying to decide between the road show production of Ziegfeld's "Whoopee" they would get there, and Clara Bow's latest opus?

And only a few years ago the poor, lowly movie was used as a "chaser" on the end of vaudeville programs to get patrons out of the theater. It seems to have accomplished that purpose.

But try to get a decent seat under eight or ten dollars for any one of ten first-class New York stage productions.

I tried to get six tickets for "Journey's End," a war play, and was asked eighteen dollars apiece. I didn't see it.

CHARLIE CHAPLIN just won't be merged. The high-powered boys who have been talking millions have not yet been able to cajole him into playing ball with them. Photoplay is in a position to know the little fellow's feelings about the recent negotiations for the financial combination of United Artists and Warner Brothers.

He considers that the plans for the merger misrepresented, so far as he was concerned, what it was physically and artistically possible for him to do over a five-year period.

And knowing that most of the stock would fall into the hands of the public, he could not conscientiously go through with the proposition, particularly in view of the fact that he felt himself obligated to keep faith with the public to whom he is indebted for his place on the screen today.

CHARLIE is frankly worried about the recent tremendous developments in the sound picture. Unchallenged in his position as the supreme artist in pantomime, he sits like a little grey-haired "Thinker" of Rodin's and wonders what it is all about and what it means to him.

With all the money he will ever need, in spite of what the income tax officials and Lita Grey did to his bankroll—and he can see a dollar as far away as any one of the lads who have been trying to whoop him into the new deal—Charlie is not primarily concerned about that phase of it, and he won't be Uncle Tom-ed down the river.

JUST write Charlie a letter and tell him what you think.

Everybody is so busy writing to Clara Bow and Janet Gaynor, Charlie Farrell and Buddy Rogers these days that only his devoted Japanese and Brazilian admirers think of writing to him.

Here's ours:

Dear Charlie: If you don't know the answer, we do. We would rather see one of your silent pictures than any singing, dialogue, or sound picture that can be made. If you won't make a picture for yourself, make one for us.

IN his new novel "The King Who Was A King," H. G. Wells unveils what is solemnly blurbed as a "new art-form."

The new art-form is nothing more nor less than a motion picture scenario, seriously proposed for production by Mr. Wells, who gets rather belatedly breathless over the glorious possibilities of the screen for spreading peace propaganda.

With its allegorical visions, its mob scenes, its unwieldy use of spectacular effects, its inept handling of dramatic situations and its stilted and self-conscious propaganda, Mr. Wells' scenario is enough to give any producer a nightmare.

IN his "new art-form," the well-meaning British author has combined all the worst and most expensive mistakes of motion pictures. His use of rather primitive symbolism is enough to give D. W. Griffith the horrors. His recklessness in combining propaganda and mob melodrama would send Cecil De Mille into chills and fever.

It is amazing and a little sad that, in attempting to work in the medium of the screen, one of the best brains in Europe has nothing to offer except a rehash of all the grandiose banalities that the motion picture has tried and passed by.

There are one or two producers—I cannot believe it of more than that number—who may reach for the ponderous tale, and handing it to one of those Hollywood writing lads, tell him to dumb it down a bit and gag it up plenty, throw in a theme song, and call it "The Big Shot Steps Out."