PLAIN, BUT GOOD

Wairarapa Times-Age, 28 September 1939, Page 4

PLAIN, BUT GOOD

MANY HOLLYWOOD STARS.

The biggest stars in the industry don’t photograph well, that is, if we go by Hollywood photographic standards. , Homely-looking Spencer Tracy and plain Paul Muni would never pass talent scouts, but both have won Academy Awards—and Tracy does not use a speck of make-up. I've seen him at work on the sets, and he doesn’t even use the dark yellow powder that most stars use. Spencer believes that make-up hides the facial muscles and wrinkles and prevents players from registering proper emotion. And just look at Basil Rathbone’s very long nose and Sonja Henio’s bland moon face. Just think of the chuckles from smug talent scouts if Charles Laughton presented himself for a screen test, and they'd probably run-for cover if Wallace Beery sh<>\Ved up for his initial screen test. Clark Gable’s ears should bar him from the screen according to standards —in fact, they nearly did when he first arrived here.

Yet, nearly all the stars mentioned above arc record-breakers at the boxoffice. It was not Hollywood or the talent'scouts who decided their fate in the end. It was you, the paying public. You saw in them something the paid and supposed-to-be-experienced talent scout could 'not see- —something different that gave you far more pleasure than if they had been merely good-looking with no ability. Do you think Charles Boyer, Don Ameche. Henry Fonda, John Garfield. Wayne Morris, Pat O'Brien, Jimmy Cagney and Dennis O'Keefe are handsome?

Of course you don’t, but you like them, and they probably appeal to you more than if they were. They are more natural and believable on the screen, and seem so much more like real persons you know in every-day life.