A VOIRDUPOIS

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 608, 9 March 1929, Page 25

A VOIRDUPOIS

AFTER STARDOM: WOMEN I ADD AND MEN LOSE 1 WEIGHT

That men and women who attain screen stardom react very differently so far as their physical characteristics are concerned is revealed by the analysis of statistics kept by the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studio officials.

It has been discovered that as soon as a male player become a star he almost invariably loses weight. On the other hand, feminine players on attaining stardom usually proceed to add a few pomid.s of avoirdupois, probably

“. . . the men thinner, the women stouter .” on the theory that now she has arrived she can eat what she wants to at least once in a while. Moreover, as time goes on, leading men become thinner and the women stouter. The analysis of the M.-G.-M. figures also reveals that the average weight of a featured player is eleven stone seven pounds—-this is excluding on the grounds of unfair competition the genial giant Bert Roach, who tops the scale at sixteen stone six pounds. The stars on the other hand average only eleven stone two pounds, with John Gilbert turning in the lowest weight of all—tea stone exactly. Among the fair sex the average weight of the stars is eight stone four pounds. If a leading 'man wants to become a director, the obvious thing is to put on a little weight, for the average director weighs eight pounds more than the average male featured player and thirteen pounds more than a star.. This may or may not explain why so few stars ever become directors. MENJOU IN TALKIES Adolphe Menjou will follow the late Leo Ditrichstein in “The Concert,” once a famous stage play, now to be made into a 100 per cent, dialogue picture. It Is a speaking debut for Menjou and his co-star, Florence Vidor, one of whose outstanding successes was made with the same actor