“How Do You Do!”

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 454, 8 September 1928, Page 25

“How Do You Do!”

Bernard Shaw Chats with Picture Audience A MOVIETONE MEETING The most impressive use to 'which the onsweeping movietone has so far been put is that of showing to America George Bernard Shaw , whose body may be claimed by both Ireland and England , but whose mind belongs to what are known as the ages.

FACE TO FACE You meet Mr. Shaw face to face as he comes walking with deliberate nonchalance down the path of an English garden, writes an American correspondent. He is tall, he is white with whiskers, he is wearing a golf suit, he is twisting the string of his eyeglasses in his hands, and he is

trying to keep his eyes on the ground rather than on the camera. Coming to the ten-foot line and hearing, -we old 1 mif ie technicians suspect, the voice of the director, G.B.S. stops short, looks up as surprised as an amateur a c to r, 1 smiles a friendly smile and speaks.

“O,” says he, in a pleasantly modulated voice to which the movietone has added no raspings that we know anything about, “O, how do you do! I am very glad to meet you. It’s nice of you—so many of you—to come to see me.” Or words to that general effect. DELIGHTFULLY INFORMAL He talks, I should say, for ten minutes. He is delightfully informal, engagingly natural, genuinely fascinating. The lines in his face are discovered to be kindly lines. The smile is enveloping and pleasant. What G.B.S. has to say is pleasantly unimportant. He is glad to make this appearance so that those people who have read his books, or even seen a play of his, may know him as he really is. So many, he has been led to believe, have had quite a wrong idea of him. He is, he thinks, really quite a gentle person. He knows at least that he has one advantage over Mussolini. The great

Italian is really a most amiable person, too, but he lacks the gift of looking the part. He has but the one commanding expression and he cannot change it. But as for Shaw— PLAYING PEEK-A-800 At this point G.B.S. covers his long face with his hands, as though he might be playing peek-a-boo with a grandson, and when he takes theig away he is frowning like a Fabian. Then the smile again, and the audience smiles with him. This substitute meeting with Mr. Shaw is very satisfying to me. Both because it brings the man closer and because of the promise it gives that, having made the plunge, he will do it again. An hour’s Shaw talk by movietone or even a half-hour’s talk would provide a most stimulating adventure. Having seen the summer lightning of his smile, I want to hear him thunder.