TALKIES

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 2, Issue 249, 13 December 1940, Page 8

TALKIES

BABY STARS LIKE LAMONT!

Directing an inl'ant star is a gift, more than an art, says Charles Lamont, who has piloted quite a number of months-old youngsters in their cinematic efforts. Lament best known as the director of Shirley Temple's first pictures,'* a series of two-reelers known as Baby Burlesques, These were made in 1933.

Previously Lamont had directed a couple of dozen silent pictures starring an infant player of the silent days, a youngster known as Big Boy. Lamont was assigned the job of making pictures with Big Boy when the child was 18 months old and continued at the talk until Big Boy was crowding four. Lamont is said to have a "way with babies." Perhaps it is because he lias a quick and ready smile, a pleasing voice and a personality that doesn't irlc them.

With the baby in "Sandy Is a Lady"' will be seen a cast of comedians that includes Mischa Auer : Eugene Pallette, Billy Gilbert, Edgar Kennedy and Fritz Feld, with Tom Brown, Nan Grey and the two mischief makers from "The UnderPup," Butcli and Buddy. Lamont has "a way 'with comedians" alsofor he cut his directorial teeth on two-reel slapstick laughmakers in the silent daj-s.

THE HITCHCOCK MASTER TOUCH IS DISCUSSED

Like Charlie Chaplin, and more recently Walt Disney, Alfred Hitchcock is coming under the eye of the psychologists. Nothing personal, of course; it is his screen technique that ' interests the heavy thinkers. It seems to be not only novel but significant as well; and the films that have made his name a synonym for screen suspense and thrills are now being considered objectively.

Hitchcock's latest screen assignment has been David O. Selznick's new United Artists release, "Rebeecca." Although this picture., unlike the previous films directed by Hitchcock, is a faithful transcription of a popular best-seller, it is nevertheless representative of the famous film maker's technique. For Daphne du Maurier wrote "Rebecca" as if she had Hitchcock in mind; and the book follows the psychological formula of all his films.

It is this formula that holds such fascination for the academicians of the cinema's thought processes. They speak of it as "the corollary of coacfive circucmstantial coadap-

tion, .whichc, in English, means the ability of Hitchcock's characters to rise( or descend) to the odd circumstances into-.which- they are plunged by his movies. It is his method to subject ordinary people to extraordinary happening's, to surround respectable,-'middle.-class citizens with an atmosphere of crime, of horror, of adventure. His heroes are quiet young men, his victims are family folk engaged in peaceful, unexciting occupations. Suddenly they find heroic roles thrust upon them.

'''Rebecca,"las it happens, is no exception to the rule that has been proved by other Hitchcock successes. Laurence Olivier as Max de Winter and Joan Fontaine as his ■young second wife are merely two people in' love, wanting only the right to peace and quiet and happiness together. When thej' come to Manderley, however, they, discover circumstances driving them to ac> tions and heroisms.