Talkies Change Comedy Methods

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 1070, 6 September 1930, Page 25

Talkies Change Comedy Methods

SUCCESS OF LAUREL AND HARDY MICKEY BEATS CHARLIE There has been a regular cycle in talking pictures, as there was in silent films. First, there was Al Jolson, and then, in rapid succession, a series of mystery, “back-stage,” high school, underworld and then war pictures. Just

now we have a number of the

bright plays of Mr. Lonsdale and Mr. Somerset Maugham.

In the meantime, I wonder vainly what has happened to the “comics” o£ the cinema, remarks a London writer.

I Three and four years ago people like me could be assured in almost any cinema of a tremendous laugh from the antics of Charlie Chaplin or Harold Lloyd, or Luster Keaton. Wo have seen Lloyd and Keaton in their maiden talking films. Chaplin has sedulously set his face against the talking films. He does not talk in his next film. “City Lights.” The only noise which emanates from him in the course of the film is when he swallows a whistle and, breathing afterward, makes a sound like a referee. Hollywood has made tentative efforts to revive the glories of departed days. Messrs. Laurel and Hardy are cases in point. The Laurel and Hardy comedies are [ even now received with shrieks of ‘ ardent laughter all over the country. ' Stan Laurel is the helpless innocent | of that team of buffoons. , FROM ENGLISH HALLS I Like Chaplin, he once played in the . Kamo troupe which travelled through the English music-halls before the , war. In those days he was a greater man than Chaplin, who was often his , under-study. i But now Laurel, too, is in the “pici tures,” and he is one of the world’s : best clowns. Yet so far the talking L films have given us nothing like “The [ Gold Rush” or “The Circus.”

I see the fashion moving hack again toward those full-length knock-about comedies which packed the cinemas before ever Al Jolson was known in England. It may be that Harold Lloyd and Buster Keaton will be found incompetent for the sound film, and that even the mighty Chaplin may be deposed. But, clearly, there will presently be a new school of custard-pie comedy in which the producer will insist on the delicious "squelch” of tile pie being heard by his audience. SECRET JOURNEY In the meantime the only real farceur of the talking pictures is Mickey Mouse. A pen-and-ink drawing has usurped the throne of a Charlie Chaplin. Cyril Maude years ago retired from the stage into the domesticity of his Devonshire farm. A few months ago he was approached by an American firm of film makers to make a talking picture of his famous play, “Grumpy.” Very secretly Maude went to Hollywood, and there, as secretly, made the film. He is now hack in Devonshire. His film is extraordinarily successful. Cyril Maude celebrated his 6Stff birthday while he was making tllTfe picture.