MODERN COMEDIES

Wairarapa Times-Age, 20 April 1939, Page 5

MODERN COMEDIES

COST MORE THAN EPICS. Comedies nowadays cost more than epics. A screen epic may be made now and then for as little as 500,000 dollars.' A million dollars will turn out a perfectly healthy epic. But a comedy with the kind of players in it who count most at the box office costs at least a million, generally more. Players like Carole .Lombard, who is the top-ranking comedienne of the screen, get salaries commensurate with their box office draft. And comedies require more than one player to do them. Other valuable considerations beside that of comedy casts include the time element. Time is the prime requisite in the polishing of a screen comedy. It takes time to film the story so that it Will be funny. Making it funny during that time requires the services of high-priced writers who know the motion picture as well as humour. And because hymour—stage, screen, radio or written—is a (delicate matter, there is a lot of time taken to see that the delicate adjustments and balances are made. Modern comedies have progressed in other departments, top. The most successful comedies of recent months have oeen known as

•‘screwball”—mad things happening to pleasantly crazy people who are possessed of enough money to indulge their penchants for daffiness. That means elaborate settings, wardrobes and other physical aspects of production. In the case of "Fools for Scandal” the comedy is set against Parisian and London locales. That means more money. Humour being more difficult to handle on the screen than anything else it takes a big budget to insure the successful creation of a film comedy. The big budget makes possible the hiring of the expensive, experienced players who can insure proper delivery of the scenario’s laugh lines and situations against the more expensive backgrounds required for the comedy of today. Comedy a few years ago was mostly a succession of gags ' strung together Without much of a story. Today the story has to be funny. Yesterday the comedy could be performed in front of a vaudeville drop. Now it has to be played as though it really happened against authentic backgrounds.