Beverley Nichols Takes a Look at Hollywood

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 514, 17 November 1928, Page 24

Beverley Nichols Takes a Look at Hollywood

WISH that I had never

visited Hollywood. &ix months ago I used to totter out of a cinema in an acute emotional crisis varying from

ecstasy to despair. I believed it all. I believed that Mr. Fairbanks really had jumped over the moon, and that Miss Garbo’s eyelashes really did sweep down to her waist. But now —I know better. So writes Beverley Nichols, brilliant young author of “Twenty Five and “Are They the Same at Home?” Consider a concrete example (he continues). We will shortly be gazing, in rapture, upon a super-film, the main action taking place outside a mighty palace—an immense and gloomy pile which towers to the skies.

So, at least, it will appear to you. Unfortunately I happen to know that this immense and gloomy pile is only a model —that, in reality, it is the size of a bandbox, and that its total cost was about ten pounds. For I have climbed up a rickety staircase to the camera platform and seen this absurd dolls’ house, perched a few feet in front of the lens, with its little cardboard trees and its tiny papier-mache steps, and however cunning may be the illusion, I cannot rid

myself of the uncomfortable feeling that this palace should really have cost more than ten pounds. It is the same with the snow. When this film is ultimately presented, you will sit back in your seats and shiver at the sight of aged women nursing crying babies in a positive avalanche of snowflakes. You will see freezing soldiers tramping up and down through pitiless vistas of white. Their pain will be your pain. But I —if you will forgive my coarse Anglo-Saxon phraseology—l shall only sweat For I, too, have tramped through that “snow.” I know that it is only powdered marble, that it is exceedingly hot underfoot, and that when it is agitated by a sufficiently large crowd of supers, it penetrates the nostrils and makes one sneeze. All of which is most distracting. However, these are only minor details. One does not go to the movies to see castles, nor even to gaze upon the bathrooms of Scottish millionaires —which, as everybody knows, are always filled with chorus girls and champagne. One goes to see the faces, to see them flinch and fade, twist and turn, to see the slow narrowing of Gloria Swansea's eyes, the pathetic droop of Greta Garbo’s mouth. But now, I know too much to enjoy these things. For however rapturous may be the expression of the lady who is flickering before me on the screen, I am unable to forget that her face is itching. Instantly my own face begins to it.c.h in sympathy. And fee cannot really enjoy recreation in such circumstances. Nobody who has not acted in the movies can possibly realise what an itchy business it is. lam not speaking without the book. Mr. Lasky himself arranged for me to have my “test,” and I was made up by Mr. Jim Collins, the star maker-up of the world. He smeared my cheeks with yellow and daubed my eyelids with rfed, “and stuck me in the mouth with brown lipsticks. He then powdered me and sent me out into the sunlight, feeling singularly obscene, and in an agony of itchiness, as though I had fallen face-foremost into an ants’ nest. It is for this reason that whenever I see a lingering kiss at the end of a film I say to myself, “Ah, they are rubbing noses together. And I know why!” Such reflections are the ruin of sentiment.

Yet even these things would be bearable if I could feel, as I used to feel, that the actors were so utterly absorbed by their roles that they had forgotten everything else. Unfortunately I can no longer feel this. Of course, there are exceptions. I have seen Emil Jannings drifting about the studio in a complete trance, long after his scene was finished. I have heard Gloria Swanson talk, quite unconsciously, in the language of Sadie Thompson while she was making "Rain.” But I have seen a great many artistes behaving in a very different manner.

The sweet and aged mothers are the worst. I used to adore them. I used to cherish every little wrinkle in their tender faces. I worked mvself into orgies of sentiment as they bravely waved good-bye to their sons —a duty which seemed to occupy a peculiarly large portion of their lives. Now they move me not at all. For 1 have seen one aged mother who 11 . 1 d ler time, have had as many children ton the screen, of course) as the Old Woman in the Shoo was sitting in the studio powdering hei nose and smoking a cigarette. The only old-fashioned thing about A that sho was carrying a copy of The Green Hat.” But 'that was not enough for me. She broke my last illusion about the movies. In future I shall attend them only for the sake of Felix the Cat. For he, at least, has never told a lie.