Photoplay/Volume 36/Issue 5/Brickbats and Bouquets

Brickbats & Bouquets

YOU FANS ARE THE REAL CRITICS

Give Us Your Views

$25, $10 and $5 Monthly for the Best Letters

WELL, you've spoken―in loud ringing tones, and with hundreds of letters.

The foes of the talking pictures are in full retreat, with a mail barrage thundering at their heels. Everyone is now disposed to like the phonoplay and to give it plenty of time and tolerance for new developments.

Many express their unbounded horror and distress at voice doubling. If any two film ladies have the call over others in our mail bag, they are the ever-glittering Garbo and the sparkling Joan Crawford Fairbanks. Of the gents, zat roguish Maurice Chevalier is kicking up plenty of fan dust.

And you may not believe it, but this month we got three rousing, though belated, cheers for a coy little newcomer named Chaplin, reported to be a comic.

And if there's one thing that touches us, it's the mail from friends over the sea. Let's have more. Now you tell some.

The movies taught me how to dress, how to act and how to be popular.

I always wondered why I couldn't be popular and why I wasn't pretty. Then it came into my bead to watch the stars. One night I saw Bebe Daniels wearing a dress I liked, so I made one just like it. It improved my looks, because it was just my type.

Then I began to act like I felt. I always felt full of pep, but I was afraid that if I acted that way people would laugh. I went to see Lupe Velez in a picture, and tried to act like her. I succeeded. Now I dress well, am seemingly well liked and seem to be very popular with both sexes. Now that the talkies are here I intend to study the way the stars talk, and if there are any improvements to make on my voice you can believe they will be made!

This is from one of your "exiled fans."

I came from Renee Adoree's country four years ago, knowing very little English. If it hadn't been for the movies, my linguistic life would have been empty, indeed. But I was fortunate in being able to go to a show every day. It was through the silent picture, and its explanatory titles, that I really learned English.

Today the talkies offer me a still greater opportunity. I go to "Movie School" regularly, and how proud I am to number among my professors of English such artists as Ruth Chatterton, Jeanne Eagels, William Powell, Edward Everett Horton and many others!

I'm tired of all this talk about movie producers having the modern boys and girls all wrong. It's the bunk.

If a producer actually did make a picture showing the modern generation as we really are, he'd be exiled from the country.

I mean to say that the movies show the young people as they really and truly are, only they sugar-coat us slightly. We do drink, smoke and pet, and we do sneak home in the wee hours of the morning. Joan Crawford's pictures do not exaggerate us one bit. Her "Dancing Daughters" was true to life, and Colleen Moore's "Why Be Good?" was a perfect conception of modern youth.

Shocking, yet true, I am only sixteen years old and I have never yet seen a moving picture which shows us moderns as bad as most of the younger crowd is.

But we youngsters are not all bad, and under it all there's some good. The movies show this, and it's so. Accept it.

I read the articles in Photoplay concerning two members of my race, Miss Nina May McKenney and Stepin Fetchit, the colored actress and actor. Both were good, and I want them to know that I think they are wonderful and appreciate what they are trying to do for our race.

I am proud of the fact that Negro talent is recognized and appreciated on the screen.

I hope more colored people will write their thanks to Hollywood, to Photoplay and to King Vidor for what they are doing for Miss McKenney, Stepin Fetchit and the colored race as a whole.

Why do all the stories read "Why Jack Gilbert Married Ina Claire?" Why not the other way round?

Ina Claire was a star in her own right long before Jack Gilbert was ever heard of. On the speaking stage, where she is rated among the best, it takes more than a pair of soulful eyes and a big grin to get by.

Ina Claire has looks, style, personality, charm, refinement, and, most of all, talent. What has Jack Gilbert compared to all these?

Is there anyone in this wide world who, on going into a theater and seeing the picture, "The King of Kings," could not have some feelings of emotion and sentiment?

Mr. DeMille is a wonderful actor. Nobody could have played the part of Jesus Christ better than he did!

When I saw Buddy Rogers in "Close Harmony" my heart almost failed me. Why? Because he looked too much like one of Nell Brinkley's drawings of "beautiful men."

Of course, I like handsome men, but not pretty ones. Barry Norton is in the same case as Buddy. "Too beautiful." Both of these are grand actors and nice boys, but their faces do not appeal to me, and that's that!

Take Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. He looks like a girl who has her hair pushed back. Also take these wax doll stars. How would John Gilbert look making love to Anita Page or Nancy Carroll? His types are Greta Garbo, Baclanova and all those vampish women. Why, Baclanova could put Buddy Rogers in a spell, and Greta could put Barry Norton in a daze.

But as I said before, they are all good actors and actresses!

P.S. I am 14 years old.

Your criticism of "The Rainbow Man" is both unjust and ridiculous.

The picture is well acted and very entertaining, without one dull moment.

Please remember that not everyone has seen "The Singing Fool." To me "The Rainbow Man was a real treat.

Why do motion picture actors get married? It spoils all when you know that your favorite actor, John Gilbert, has married Ina Claire!

Why say that actors have a right to get married as well as other people? Don't they know when they start in pictures that they have to dance to the tune the fans play and that they can't displease their public? I wish something would be done to stop them!

The first British talkie has made its bow. "Kitty" came as a great relief after the many American talkies, which, with one or two exceptions, were ordeals rather than entertainments.

The voices and acting were most refreshing, and before long British talkies will hold the public as the American brand is now doing. Hollywood―you're up against it!

Just to voice my appreciation of Photoplay, as one of many thousands living in obscure parts of the world, where even in the towns there is little chance to see any of the big films until they are ancient and mutilated, and are endured while sitting on hard benches.

I read and reread Photoplay, even the ads, and only loan the magazine on promises of quick return.

As one who rarely has the chance to lose himself in the luxury of a modern theater with a first class film (I dare not hope to see and hear a talkie!), I am grateful for the magazine which weaves so much romance into the lives of lonely people in a new country!

Hail to the Talkies! Admitting defects inevitably attendant upon their incipiency, the combination of great screen acting and sound effect is rich, stimulating, captivating!

"The race is to the strong," and this new, virile, vital Art will some day write its name upon the pages of those Annals which Man's all-conquering skill is fashioning into a History of artistic and mechanical prowess. Silent, some pictures would leave but an evanescent, negligible impression. Under the spell of Sound, these same productions are Gorgeous Events in the emotional and esthetic consciousDess of thousands of ardent lovers of Motion Pictures who are watching this Bud of the Cinema Hothouse blossom into a superb flower!

May it never fade, nor its petals droop!

I was born and brought up in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower. I know Paris―his Paris, my Paris―for its gaiety, its light, love and laughter.

I know it for its sorrow and its heartaches, for, after all, it is human, this pulsing, throbbing city.

Last night I saw Maurice Chevalier in "Innocents of Paris." His charming voice and personality deserve all the praise he has received, but may he stay French!

Please don't Americanize him. Don't give him American rôles in American stories―there are enough fine American actors for that. Let him continue to play rôles like his first―the lives of the French. Merci.

Well, well! For once, maybe, you have told us just what a star looks like, without any flattery. In August Photoplay there was an article about the girl who played Garbo. In the story Garbo gets a lot of socks, while the little De Vorak is complimented on every hand. If this is the real Garbo, I am a greater admirer of hers than ever, and that's saying lots!

Here's a star that doesn't care for publicity or beautiful clothes, and she is criticized for it. She is just herself outside the studio, and not one of these unreal pieces of perfect humanity. I believe that Greta Garbo is one of the greatest actresses the screen has ever seen or ever will see!

On Page 51 of August Photoplay you have a few things to say about that great artist, Greta Garbo, which are not true. First, the great Garbo does not dress in "a careless manner." Second, it is neither for "solace" nor for "spite" that Greta Garbo has been chummier than ever with Nils Asther.

Greta Garbo had all the chance in the world to marry John Gilbert. Of the two, as far as love is concerned, he loved her most.

Hereafter, when writing about the "beautiful Garbo," please be a little more considerate in your writings, because we (all the fans) who love her, like to see nice things written about her, as not anything to the contrary is true, anyway. So why lie about that famous, exotic beauty, Greta Garbo―blonde, statuesque and beautiful? May she always remain in the movies. One who adores her.

I am one of those among "many thousands of afflicted souls to whom the passing of the silent picture is a genuine tragedy"―quoting from Mr. Quirk's editorial in the June issue of Photoplay.

I desire to express my appreciation of his genuine understanding of us who have lost their hearing and also to assure him and his readers that there are compensations, after all.

To have lived in the age of the fine growth of the motion picture industry is a privilege in itself. It is true that the silent pictures, with their clever sub-titles, were easier to understand―but I am fast learning to read the lips through attending talking pictures!

Can you imagine anything more wonderful than to learn to read the lips by means of the talking pictures?

It is my belief that more people afflicted as I am will learn lip movement through talking pictures than in any other manner, as time goes on. People that were not born deaf but were afflicted later on do not, as a rule, study the art, and now it is brought to us through talkies, and can be studied while at pleasure, not at work.

There is always so much to be thankful for if we but look around for it, and I am grateful for this opportunity.

Mrs. J. D. Tousley.