MUNI IS NEVER HIMSELF

Evening Star, Issue 23687, 21 September 1940, Page 5

MUNI IS NEVER HIMSELF

It is psychologically impossible for Paul Muni to get away from a role in a picture, during production or for several weeks thereafter. While the picture is in work, Muni is so engrossed ill the role that he resents all suggestion that he should give time or attention to extraneous matters.

Unconsciously he seems to take on some of the characteristics of the man he is impersonating, so that for months that ‘ Jaurez ’ (pronounced “ Warezz ”) was in production, he was a strong, silent man, with set jaws and tight lips. This man to-day appears in the person of Paul Muni in his latest screen portrait of that of President Benito Jaurez, in the Warner Bros.’ production ‘ Jaurez.’ Bette Davis is 4costarred with him. Paul Muni isn’t like Richard 11. He never is “ himself again.” In fact, so far as his pictures are concerned, he has never been himself at all.

He submerges himself completely in each new role; This ability is his stock-in-trade. He tries not to play two roles in the same way. In fact, he says that he rejects any offered play or picture in which the character he is to portray resembles any character he has previously. played. Above all, Muni is never Muni on the screen, even when he seems to be in such pictures as ‘Dr Socrates ’ and ‘ Hi, Nellie.’ Those were character creations, too, as carefully worked out in their way as is the serenely confident President of Mexico in ‘ Juarez.’ There is no short-cut device by which Muni sheds his personality and takes

over, for a few weeks at a time, the trappings, physical and mental, of another. It represents hard work, and it is no easier for Muni than for any other accomplished actor. He does it thoroughly, however, and that explains the fact that during his 10. years in pictures, Muni has made less than a dozen films.

Inclined to he reserved, except on special occasions when he can ho very gay and relaxed, he frightens most of his interviewers into asking foolish questions and then resents those questions.

A demon for detail in his own work, he is invariably impressed by statistics, no matter who quotes them or how accurate they are.

He has had four pictures that were or are smash hits —‘ Scarface,’ 1 I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang,’ ‘ The Story of Louis Pasteur,’ for which ho won the Academy Award in 1936 j and ‘ The Life of Emile Zola.’ 1 Juarez ’ is expected to he a fifth in this impressive list.