Judge — February 20, 1932 — page 22: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

nave heard many definitions of charm, but none of them is all-in- clusive enough to use in anything a scientific manner. This man or t woman may be charming to me, and nothing but a Swedish pbat But, while charm may be an chemical reaction taking place under certain weather and alcoholic conditions, glamour and charm to- gether mark one actress from another just as surely as an actor's clothes mark him an actor, It is not possibl “Because Miss Se tooth, because she wears number five ause she walks with a slig slow motion of her left foot, she is, ac- cording to the rules set up by the Will Hays Committee on Charm and Glamour, an A-1 actress”. On the other hand, I can not understand how ny n who has even a rudimentary critical mind, who has attended the theatre at all, who has seen in the flesh Miss Ruth Gordon, Lynn Fon- tanne or Helen Hayes, who has ever met in his life a charming woman, could mistake the r for the imita- tion, could, worse yet, mistake mim- iery for talent. of course, to say ind-So has a gold shoes, be Surely these gentlemen could tell, after one highball, the difference be- tween a Kansas real estate agent's son, one year out of Oxford, with an ac- cent filtered through what appears to improperly mashed potatoes, and the late Lord Birkenhead. Un- derstanding and penctration are not esoteric properties. Even subway guards appreciated the difference b tween Chaplin, in his first days, and West and his many other imitators. I do not consider myself or epicurean; I do not profess any great woman-lore. But I honestly can not sit through any picture performed by Miss Norma Shearer without suffering the sort of embarrassment I used to feel for pub- lie school councilmen during their an- JUDGE By PARE LORENTZ Limited talent is not I do not mind hear- ing a third-rate violinist. I even have squandered money on nickel pianos. Bat I have heard few grammar school students attempt Bach's concerto in D minor for violin and piano, and I usually get into the pantry near the White Rock when one of the home- town boys starts his rietous imitation of Al Jolson singing “Mammy.” nual speeches. embarrassir HAVE ¢ you think Norma They say: : or “I liked Robert Mont- gomery,” or “I thought she was bet- ter in her last picture,” or “LT thought the Maybe the boys think they are warming the hearths of millions of homes when they toss bouquets at Miss Shearer. Perhaps, even, they think they are do- ing nothing but a good turn for shrewd and successful Mr. Thalberg. They can't all be crazy actress 2" Divore dialog ¢ was good.” “pe ate Lives” should never have been filmed. It was a tenuous play. It was so well-knit, so beauti- fully timed, it was more a tailor-made play than an ordinary dramatic pro- duction, And it was ¢ honest a piece of travesty stage has had recently. Written by an Englisht Englishman him- an, a cleve Recommended “ Arrowsmith’ A highty over-rated if 1 picture, worth ei ause of Miss Hayes, Mr. Anson Hell Divers Par cture Bennett rama naval flying nkey Business” —W e ies, so LT mention this nkenstein”—Miscast 1 repeti s by Jame W “Taxi"—James Cagney knock-about comedy. 20 self, almost the personification of the light, quick, pale-handed young men who stepped into the cold shoes of their dead older bh tfter the war, “Pri mocking, amusing slice of a life, good or bad, practiced by the youthful pall-bearers who after the war decided to dance instead of mourn at the grave of a ating Empire. And beneath the allet-dancer’s gaiety of Coward's lines, coating the delicate barbs of the late Munroe, of Coppard, of David rnett, vou will find nasty steel. Not the homely, carnest bludgconings of our own bullies, our Menckens, our Tullys, but the nasty, shrewish temper of a bitter woman, of an Oscar Wilde. hers e Lives’ bee Movies, and movie people, are too simple for such neo-slimy stuff. that Mr. Coward's was nots It amused you just as a high half-drunken, once-beautiful wom ona binge is amusing. (It would take an oyster’s temperament to put up with the same lady at breakfast.) Even if they had hired some grown people to play “Private Lives" in- stead of Miss Shearer, who, as one di- rector put it, seems always to be imi- tating her big sister, and Robert Montgomery, who up to now has had merely to look tall, handsome and pleased with himself in order to give the girls palpitations—even had the producers started with Gertrude Law- rene d Noel Coward, for whom the play was tailored, they should have snatched the marvelous, quick lines from their stage sets and tricd to fit them into movie forms, Instead, what did they do? ‘They photographed the play, scene by scene, They then showed it to the director and Miss Shearer. Miss Shearer then gave an carnest ion of Miss Lawrence, gestures, » and clothes. [It was embar- si I felt ashamed. And Tg still ashamed to think that such an obvious, superficial and ill-nourished piece of junk should have been praised by my fellow-workers, comicbooks.com