NOVEL TALKING TECHNIQUE

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 600, 28 February 1929, Page 14

NOVEL TALKING TECHNIQUE

DOUGLAS FAIRBANKS’S NEW ROLE

Douglas Fairbanks’s “The Iron Mask" will be made with a new and novel talking technique that will combine for the first time the best features of stage and screen, according to Carroll S. Trowbridge, the star’s personal representative. He has just returned to New York after several weeks on the Fairbanks lot at the United Artists’ studio in Hollywood. There will be no dialogue in “The Iron Mask.” Fairbanks will talk directly to his audience. The picture will have all the spectacle and swift action of former Fairbanks productions, and the novel talking technique as well, according to Trowbridge, who sees in the Fairbanks method a type of talking picture that does not narrow the scope of spectacle productions and that holds an audience’s strict attention because the actor on the screen is talking directly to them and looking them in the eyes at the same time.

“The Iron Mask” continues the adventures of “The Three Musketeers,” and Douglas Fairbanks wil be seen and heard as d’Artagnan.

The characters of the Irish and Jewish fathers in Paramount’s screen version of “Abie’s Irish Rose” are ably portrayed by J. Farrell MacDonald and J-an Hersholt, respectively. Mr. and Mrs. Cohen are played by Bernard Gorcey and Ida Mramer, who played the original stage characters on Troadway. Nancy Carroll has'the character of Rosemary, Charles Rogers that of Abie.