New York Panorama by Federal Writers' Project;

Author:Federal Writers' Project;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Dover Publications
Published: 2018-04-21T04:00:00+00:00

XIII. MOTION PICTURES

Pleasures in Palaces

THE AMERICAN cinema has impressed its influence on a thousand communities from Bucharest to Surabaya, New York among them; but the influence of New York on the cinema constitutes a unique cultural relationship. Indirectly but unmistakably, the metropolis puts its stamp on American motion-picture art.

The keen-eared movie-goer may have observed that Popeye, gnarled knight of the clenched fist and the corncob pipe, speaks Tenth Avenue's indigenous tongue. Betty Boop, epitome of short-skirted innocence in the 1920's, scolds her little dog and sings her copyrighted ditties in exaggerated New Yorkese. It is not unlikely that her creation was suggested by the personality and appearance of a musical comedy and screen actress, Helen Kane, whose short-lived star rose in the Bronx.

New York's vital contribution to screen acting art lies not alone in the number and quality of actors it claims as natives. It has produced individuals whose screen personalities and acting style symbolize America and its people.

Just as William S. Hart was a national idol during the period of pre-war growth and the World War itself, so it is entirely logical that James Cagney should have become the embodiment of the Great American Male during the Babylonian years of the Coolidge era. Hart's vast popularity was based on the vitality with which the pioneer tradition persisted in the life of the American people. This tradition gave way in part, however, before the increasingly urban substance and coloration that American culture began to assume in the post-war period.

In the unsophisticated years when Bill Hart and his pony were idols of the screen, the ideal man was straightforward, fearless and pure. But in the sybaritic 1920's, this paragon of American manhood, imbued with the ideology of speedy success, turned tough, unscrupulous and glib. Because his acting embodies all these qualities and modifies them with a subtle warmth of attractive personality, Cagney and his tommy-gun became the apotheosis (almost the caricature) of this spirit, replacing Hart and his six-shooter as symbols of America. Such observations are necessarily oversimplified, perhaps too exclusive; but they help to illuminate certain major changes of emphasis in the national psyche.

Again, as a cinematic reflection of its own admittedly insular life, New York has contributed such a typical personality as Lionel Slander. No one who has ever elbowed his way through the lower East Side will fail to recognize the raucous voice, the good-humored sneer, the compressed lips, the critical lift of the eyebrows, the noisy obtuse cynicism—even the callous deadlisess he displayed in A Star Is Born—that mark Stander as New York's own.

Equally indigenous to New York's celebrated sidewalks is that nightclub fish-out-of-water in the motion pictures, Jimmy Durante, He represents New York of the 1920's not merely as a living caricature of New York's Al Smith. His characterization of the unlettered but shrewd political adviser in The Phantom President was a pat, if accidental, commentary on New York politics; and his self-libelous label, "Schnozzola," could have blossomed only in New York's polyglot give-and-take. Moreover, his

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.