CHIVALRY TAKES THE COUNT

Radio Record, 29 July 1938, Page 15

CHIVALRY TAKES THE COUNT

A Film Article

By

K. E.

GOULTER

OT so many years ago, when Rudolf was the Sheik, film audiences used to sit rapt through close-ups. of two-minute-long kisses-and love it. Now tender Romance is on the down, wilting like the screen heroines who used to be wooed by it. Rough-house courtships keep the box. offices busy. So screen heroines don’t fall for kisses any more-it’s black eyes and fisticuffs that make them take the vow. When Jimmy Cagney pushed a grape fruit into Mae Clarke’s face, way back in 1931, screen chivalry took its first sock. It has been taking them ever since and to-day is groggy indeed. For 1938 Romance is rough and tough. If the lover embraces his sweetheart at all it’s in an all-in wrestling clinch, Remember Leslie Howard’s and Joan Blondell’s tussle in "Stand In," and the classic LombardMarch boxing bout of "Nothing Sacred?" Yet when Cagney pushed that grapefruit he was regarded as something of a screen rebel. Why to-day a good crack on a lady’s jaw is one of the first signs of "lurv" awakening in the cave-man chest. Once upon a time the man that hit the heroine wasn’t known as the hero... but that’s an old story. Like most rebels, tough guy Cagney was not so much wrong as ahead of his time.: It was not until Clark Gable came along that the "man-hits-woman" type of romance really became popular.

urable, aS rubdliec Idol No. 1, brought the "treat ‘em rough boys" into the front rank. He even got an Academy Award when he spanked Claudette Colbert with a hair brush in "It Happened One Night." Of course there was more to the role than. spanking, but still, it showed tough romance had definitely arrived. It was accepted and approved in the highest cinematic circles. Gable curbed his pugilistic spirits a little after "It Hap .- pened One Night." But I can remember some fairly rough treatment he gave the late Jean Harlow when he wooed her in "China Seas." In

the recent "Test Pilot" he is back again as ithe hardboiled hero-swooping from the skies to carry off Myrna Loy and marry her without a by-your-leave. {N any case, Gable or no Gable, the taste for he-lovers did not stop with one picture. Robert Donat was, I think, the first Englishman to forget the "old school tie" traditions when he hauled Madeline Carroll, willy-nilly, through the exciting adventures of "The Thirty-Nine Steps." Another "English gentleman" actor, Herbert Marshall, breaks through his inhibitions most unexpectedly in "Breakfast for Two,’ when he and Barbara Stanwyck mix it in no uncertain manner-custard pies and all. I can remember the time when Marshall played nothing but "other men’-who suffered silently with stiff-lipped British chivalry. And who would have imagined scholarly Leslie Howard, who established a new "high" for tender romance in "Romeo and Juliet," acting like any American G-man who had never been taught how to plav the game, the cad?

Yet in "It’s Love I’m After" Howard plays a role that portrays him as very nearly a boor, egoistical and unchivalrous, He even burlesques the death scene in "Romeo and Juliet!’ THESE cultured Englishmen are following the path that every film actor must take these days if he wants to hear his woman say, "T will." Tiven suave William Powell, Hollywood’s perfect gentleman fore got himself in ‘Double Wedding." Dignity went by the board in his dealings with Perfect Wife Myrna Loy. Naturally, she could (Contd. on page 53,).

Chivalry Takes The Count SCREEN HEROES TREAT ‘EM ROUGH (Continued from page 15.)

take it, but the surprising part is that Powell could give it-and be applauded for the giving. Of a truth, the age of chivalry is dead! Take Fredric March, onee famed for his smooth courtesy. ‘There was 1othing half-hearted about his departure from the ranks of the chivalrous. If you saw the fight between him and Carole Lombard in "Nothing Sacred," you will know what I mean. Carole Lombard, incidentally, also took it on the chin in "True Confession’’-this time at the fists of I'red MacMurray. There is another and more bloodthirsty battle, according to advance reports, in "Love, Honour and Behaye," between Wayne Morris and Priscilla Lane. In this both contestants receive black eyes. PRODUCERS are making the most of the public’s rough-house leanings. Hollywood expects every male star nowadays to do the dirty. It proves his virility. When Tyrone Power came into popularity, for instance, we had someone who might very well haye gone back to the gentle, Valentino tradtion. But Power, with his dark, sensitive face and soulful eyes, was not the fashionable type. On the other hand, he was too good to lose. What happened? Next thing we knew he had dropped

Loretta Young in a mud puddle, and in "Old Chicago" he was the fullyfledged firebrand, punching brother Don Ameche with abandon and bringing down Alice Faye with a flying tackle. Robert Taylor is another whose good looks were too finely cast to suit the directors. Tie was allowed to make love to Garbo in tke old style in "Camille," but soon afterward the studio put a stop to all that soft stuff. In "A Yank at Oxford" he is a brawny, quarrelsome athlete, and his next role is as a pyrize-fighter in "Give and Take.’ At the moment he is being coached by heavyweight Max Baer, so we can expect some poor heroine to be struck by a tough proposition next Taylor film! All male screendom, indeed, seems to be toeing the line-or entering the ring if you prefer it. The only ones immune are the Spencer Tracys-the strong, ugly fcllows whose manhood is written op their faces. Paradoxically, they have become the screen’s chivalrous gentlemen. Even Gary Cooper, who hates manhandling women, has been foreed into doing it. For years he steered a difficult course between he-man roles aud gentlemanly behaviour, then landed a beautiful right to Madeleine Carroll's jaw in "The General Died at Dawn." Nevertheless, he let it be known during the filming of the picture that he objected to the seene strongly. Many retakes were necessary before the blow Was satisfactorily filmed. Later Cooper’s protests took a more concrete form when he flatly refused to knock out Frances Dee in the shipwreck sequence in "Souls at Sea’--even to save her life. "It makes me feel a snake to hit any woman," he is reported to have said at the time. True, this long Don Quixote appears to have overeome his scruples in ‘‘BlueBeard’s Highth Wife,’ when he slaps Claudette Colbert’s face and puts her over his knee for an old-fashioned spanking. 3nt siudio whispers have it that Mrnst Lubitsech spent eight days persuading Cooper to do the deedand even then we are not shown Cooper actually spanking Claudette, but only the rise and fall of his hand. It is quite believable it hurt him more than it hurt her. All in all, I don’t think I would be far wrong in prophesying that before next year even those die-hards among the chivalrous-Ronald Coleman and Nelson Eddy-will have been forced over the ropes with Cooper into the © ring of the "tough guys." Maybe Coleman is weary of heing a_ selfsacrificing "Prisoner of Zenda,’ anyway, and if Nelson Eddy wants to throw his weight just a little after the kisses and apple blossom of "Maytime,’ who would blame him? Not the producers certainly! Who knows, perhaps in a few years we shall see the huge fade-out kiss replaced by the uppercut and fade-out Yes, they’re tough, mighty tough, in Hollywood to-day. . 4 «