(3 of 4)
Paulette Goddard's influence upon Chaplin has been noteworthy. When they go out together they use not his car, a Cadillac assessed on the Los Angeles tax rolls at less than $100, but her Rolls-Royce. She has persuaded Chaplin to discard occasionally his customary costume of sneakers, white ducks, open collar, and sport coat for more decorative garments. She has modernized his house to the extent of eliminating a decade's accumulation of old scripts, broken dictographs, phonograph records. Chaplin hates parting with such memorabilia as much as he hates parting with actual cash—a trait so noticeable that, when he is lunching with his staff, a subordinate usually pays the check, later reimbursing himself from company funds.
Chaplin swims, plays tennis, never smokes, drinks only an occasional public glass of champagne. He gives infrequent parties. His intimate friends—the Sam Goldwyns, Douglas Fairbanks. King Vidor —are few. At the dinner table, Chaplin, whose screen appearances have been limited for 20 years to impersonations of a small tramp in baggy pants, will prove himself the most brilliant pantomimist alive with interpretations, sometimes lasting as long as an hour, of Fagin or Captain Bligh, Marlene Dietrich or Franklin D. Roosevelt. He still wants to play Napoleon.
The Story of Louis Pasteur (Warner Brothers) is a serious attempt to create a serious cinema biography of a great man. Paul Muni studied biographies of Pasteur, conferred with laboratory experts, spent days perfecting his makeup. Warner's research staff scurried to France to fetch authentic props. Authors of the screen play worked hard to condense the chemist's life into a dramatic script that would be historically valid.
As serious cinema, The Story of Louis Pasteur is at its best in the faithful reproduction of the following incidents: Pasteur's spectacular triumph, when 25 bleating sheep, previously inoculated, prove to a throng of skeptical doctors that death from anthrax can be prevented; his decision to risk his life & work by treating nine-year-old Joseph Meister with injections which he had tested only on his menagerie of dogs; his 70th birthday celebration before a distinguished Sorbonne audience. So well has Paul Muni caught the spirit which immunized the great French scientist against despair that even cinemaudiences who know they are fanciful will not cavil at the introduction of a villain, Dr. Charbonnet (Fritz Leiber); at the 18-year postponement of Pasteur's paralytic attack; at other slight tinkerings with truth. Josephine Hutchinson as Pasteur's unselfish and understanding wife is likewise without flaw, helps to make Muni's interpretation all the more complete.
Warner Brothers boasts of having originated most major recent cinema trends.
Unable to patent their latest idea, but unwilling to see it maltreated, they are rushing screen biographies of Major General Goethals and Dr. Gorgas, Ludwig van Beethoven, Florence Nightingale (Kay Francis). Other producers plan to recreate Houdini (George Raft), Buffalo Bill, Elias Jackson ("Lucky") Baldwin. To be released this week by Twentieth Century-Fox is The Prisoner of Shark Island, the story of Dr. Samuel Alexander Mudd, (TIME, Feb. 4, 1935).