Pola’s Tears

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 868, 11 January 1930, Page 23

Pola’s Tears

I | REFLECTED EMOTION- DID | NOT IMPRESS CAUTIOUS ! EWS EDITOR Are film workers themselves ever emotionally affected by the situations they contrive on the screen? There are those who say they are, and bring' up stories to prove it. Such stories are seldom printed and rarely believed. Because of their very trutjr, they take on the illusion of "sob publicity.” A reporter on a Los Angeles paper once accompanied Pola Negri to the projection room to view scenes made that day. One scene was very dramatic, and, caught in the web of her own pictured emotions, Miss Negri cried as hard as any of her admirers. The reporter returned to his typewriter and tapped out this incident in a story. “Rubbish!” cynically remarked his city editor, and consigned it to the waste basket. Much to the embarrassment of William Slavens McNutt, a noted screen writer, Grover Jones, his collaborator on “The Mighty” for George Bancroft, is telling a story of this type. Working along on a story, Jones says he heard someone sniffling one afternoon. He glanced at McNutt, seated at an adjoining typewriter, and to hi* amazement marked tears on the cheeks of his friend. “What the devil is wrong, Mac?” Jones reached over and tore the sheet from McNutt’s typewriter. It bore the pathetic dialogue for a scene in “The Mighty,” in which a young lieutenant dies in Bancroft's arms.