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Show ; KATHLEEN NORMS Glamour Is Ruining the Movies 'i JJ GROUP of housekeeping women in Buffalo want to get a message to Hollywood. How do we do it? We think we know what's the matter with the movies," writes Mary Cuttery. "We are neighbors and friends," her letter goes- on, "we do our own work, our own washing, we share the care of 38 children, the oldest not yet 12. Isn't that a pretty good record? And we love the movies. We don't play bridge, we can't afford night clubs, but there's nothing that carries car-ries one through a hard long day quite as well as the thought of a good picture in the evening, with a drugstore soda to follow. "But, equally, nothing is so tiring tir-ing as a poor movie unless it's two poor movies, and we've been burned pretty often of late. We sit through bad pictures, through sheer weariness and laziness but their memory makes us a little more wary next time. "Now, I'll tell you what we've decided is wrong. It's the girls. Those eternal new stars and starlets star-lets and finds' and 'discoveries' with their gromed hair that no storm or shipwreck musses,1 their perfect frocks, their eyelashes, their plaster-image beauty. Can't we get some natural, human-looking girls who can really act, onto the screen?" Don't Have to Act With this letter, Mary, I entirely agree. We've heard a good many reasons why pictures are losing giddy Dan Dailey do an exquisite bit of serious acting, and will go on record that Victor Mature, who had to endure an inordinate amount of hilarious publicity when he first entered en-tered the lists, is to become a really great star. There is a Reason When pictures with only a very subordinated feminine interest score heavily at the box office, does it not occur to producers that there is a reason? In this category would be most of last year's successes: "All the Kings Men," "Command Decision," Deci-sion," "Champion," "The Fallen Idol," "Red River," "The Hasty Heart," "Battleground," "Sword In the Desert," "The Window," "Sundowners," "Down To The Sea," "Bicycle Thief," and, of course, many more whose names I can't recall. There were parts for women wom-en in a few of these, but they were comparatively unimportant, and the women themselves were comparatively compara-tively unknown and unspoiled. Other pictures, much advertised, and with famous stars in some instances, instan-ces, were not liked, even with the help of horses, mules, and runs of tuna fish. In one costly picture some years ago a famous woman star played the part of a peasant girl who had been brutally ill-treated by soldiers, her head shaved, her clothing in rags, and her poor mind shaken by the horrors of war. The great star wore, in this picture, a most becoming be-coming crop of short curls, and a smart little sweater-skirt outfit that might have come straight from Firth Avenue. In another really magnificent picture, enhanced by her own fine dancing, the woman star attached to her head a distracting dis-tracting mop of heavy hair. "... girl stars are puppets ..." their popularity; this is the main one. Hollywood girls don't have to act; they not c-nly don't try but they can't understand why they should try to express emotions, express ex-press fear, surprise, passion. Men who depended upon clothes, eyelashes, eye-lashes, lovely bare legs and rippling masses of well-brushed hair as a claim to success would not be given giv-en a second chance. Our male stars are actors. Our girl stars are puppets pup-pets for dramatic clothing, in picturesque pic-turesque setting, and are living in so exciting and gratifying an atmosphere atmos-phere while it lasts that it never seems to cross their minds that anything is wrong. I am an enthusiastic movie lover, but there is not one woman star whose name can lure me away from my comfortable study at night. One or two of the older ones, Joan Crawford and Bette Davis, perhaps, are occasionally given plays worth seeing, but even they need more and more the prop of a variegated and famous group of males to carry the picture. On the other hand, there are 20 or 30 male stars whose fans never miss a picture. Few of these are conspicious for beauty. To list Robinson, Rains, Pidgeon, Coleman, Tracy, Mason, Cooper, Niven, Don-levy, Don-levy, Olivier, Laughton, is not to catalog men conspicious for good looks. Twenty more fine character actors, usually seen in supporting roles, would include some noticeably notice-ably homely men. But these men are actors. They feel what they play; they live it, I have seen the |