Wants His Girls to Look Friendly

Radio Record, Volume VIII, Issue 41, 19 April 1935, Page 24

Wants His Girls to Look Friendly

Samuel Goldwyn Searched for Something New in Chorus Girls for "Kid Millions’-Schoo!l Teachers and- Artists’ Models Face the ~Cameras-"Girl of the’ Limberlost" Again.

HEN Samuel Goldwyn began "Kid Millions," Eddie Cantor’s fifth annual screen musical comedy, he did so with a renewed determination to surround the banjo-eyed buffoon with sixty girls of a beauty unmatched anywhere in the world. Finding the. beauties and gathering them together as this year’s crop of Goldwyn girls proved to be a task almost as heartless and hopeless as the medieval quest for the Holy Grail. For Goldwyn had his heart set on sixty perfect girls, no one of whom resembled another. All perfect, but no two alike. Goldwyn is determined to break down the "uniform" girl doing military precision dances. We wants girls on the screen to look friendly. He wants them to be remembered. He wants their nature and their personality to be seen. It became the responsibility of and a challenge to Seymour Felix, who staged the ensembles and arranged the pantomimed songs in

"Kid Millions" which has its New Zealand premiere this week. This year brought forth no improvement of method in finding girls. No one walk of life, no one part. of. the country, was richer or more productive of feminine pulchritude, than another. It is a patient process and a costly one. The average is 145 girls interviewed for each girl selected. For each successful applicant, eighteen girls were tested. The cost of finding and testing ran well into four figures for each girl. Janice Jarratt is pretty generally conceded to be the leader of this year’s cotillion, At eighteen, this gir] from Jackson, Texas, is the most soughtafter photographer’s model in New York. Her face is said to be cameraproof; it is impossible to photograph her to disadvantage. In the Department of Education at the University of California jn Los Angeles was Charlotte Russell. So deeply

entrenched was she in the problems of teaching and child. psychology that she had never gone in for the Campus Capers of the school or any other student activity. Her family, ranchers near Sacramento, were pressed for money. Now she has given up her tortoiseshell spectacles and her ground-gripper shoes; she is a showgirl in the Cantor I picture. Bddie Cantor had always liked his dentist, Dr. Goodson. His. daughter, Gail, was a pleasantly mannered and attractive youngster.. One day, noticing her on his way to the enamelled chair, Eddie wondered how she’d do in a screen test. She did ail right. Caryl Lincoln has been around Hollywood a number of years, working as 2 leg and back double. When the legs or the back of a star weren’t good enough for a certain shot. Caryl: was called upon. Mary Lou Dix was one of those amply revealed: beauties .who |disport themselves at the Paradise 'Night Club in New York. All the Broadway columnists told her that she ought to be in the movies. She is. ALTHOUGH it is the old story of the young and handsome city lad on holiday in the waybacks falling head over heels in love with the sweet young . country lass, and finally breaking with his fiancee to return to his true love, "A Girl of the Limberlost" is very charmingly told and after resigning myself to a revival of pre-War fashions I thoroughly enjoyed a well-acted and delightful film. Losing her adored husband when she could not save him from drowning in a swamp owing to the nearness of childbirth caused such antipathy towards her daughter in her early years that Katherine Comstock’s bitterness Comes near to wrecking the life of the child, Elnora. It was not until the girl was fully. grown that the mother accidentally discovered that her husband had been untrue to her and realised how grossly unfair and tyrannical she had been towards her daughter. By then, of course, it was difficult to heal the breach, but finally the story works out happily. Louise Dresser ag the gruff mother acts superbly, and the scene in which. she awkwardly attempts to make "amends with her daughter is perhaps one of the finest scenes in the film. Miss Dresser has a most difficult .part in which she has to change completely from the harsh and overbearing to the kindly and loving mother. Perhaps no other actress could have taken the part of the winsome and shy Hlnora better than Marian Marsh, who impressed very favourably indeed. Ralph Morgan and Helen Jerome Eddy played the part of the understanding neighbours who fully sympathised with the child and did their utmost to bring a little happiness into her life, while Hd-. ward Nugent portrayed the’ boy from the city very naturally and well,