HOLLYWOOD'S ATTITUDE TO SLAPSTICK

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Volume 81, Issue 67, 11 December 1937, Page 10

HOLLYWOOD'S ATTITUDE TO SLAPSTICK

Slapstiek is dead! Long live slapstick! Which means, in the opinion of one of Hollywood 's leading comedy directors, that the old slapstiek comedy of the silent days could never get a laugh by itself to-day. Instead, it has been sueceeded by grown-iip slapstiek. "I have always been a stauncjh believer in slapstiek comedy," said Director Richard Thorpe, "but the sort of slapstiek of yesterday cannot get a laugh to-day. To support his belief, Thorpe is getting much comedy from William Powell in Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's "Double Wcdding," also starring Myrna Loy. Powell is a penniless itinerant artist who wears a beret and racoon coat and lives in a trailer. Many of his antics are pure slapstiek, but it is the gesture of his restless hands, his galloping faeial museles and the inflections he lends to his lines that add sparkle to the Powell type of comedy. "The publie must shop to-day for Its laughs," Thorpe continued. "By shopping, I mean they must look for the laughs not in some ridiculous stunt at the moment of its happening, but in the business that leads up to it and the reaction that follows. In the silent days, all gestures and facial expressions wero ex&ggerated inanifold. This was drama because only through emphatic pantomime could the story be told. What was drama yesterday is comedy to-day. These exaggerated clutchings of hands. signs of despair, woeful looks and horror tricks provide some of our healthiest laughs — if there is ajplaee for such things in the screen stores of to-day."