Word: zolas
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Baltic Deputy (Lenfilm). A universally noble cinema theme, of which the most prominent U. S. exponent is Paul Muni (Zola, Pasteur), is the life story of the great-hearted man of science. To be worth his epitaph in Russia, however, a scientist must also hew to the Marxian line. Such a one was Professor Arcady Klimentievich Timiriazev, sometime lecturer at Oxford and Cambridge, and professor of plant physiology at the Moscow State University. The explosion of the Russian Revolution, when he was 75, brought down his grey hairs not in sorrow but in grandeur to the grave, gave Soviet cinema...
They Won't Forget (Claude Rains, Gloria Dickson, Edward Norris); Topper (Roland Young, Gary Grant, Constance Bennett); Saratoga (Jean Harlow, Clark Gable); The Life of Emile Zola (Paul Muni, Joseph Schildkraut); The Spanish Earth (directed by Joris Ivens with commentary by Ernest Hemingway) ; Souls at Sea (Gary Cooper, George Raft, Frances Dee, Olympe Bradna...
Muni's superb characterization of the older Zola is a result of the most careful and concentrated preparation. A lover of makeup, he added extra hair to his own black beard and worked out an arrangement which took three hours each day to apply. He studied all the existing records of Zola's life and the Dreyfus case. At home he spoke his lines into a dictaphone and played them back for sound. He mastered characteristic gestures: the irritated twirling of the pince-nez, the contemplative tapping of the stomach, the sudden bursts of laughter...
...after that made his first hit movie, Scarface. Since then he has made I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang, Hi, Nellie, Bordertown, Black Fury, Dr. Socrates, The Story of Louis Pasteur and The Good Earth. Pasteur won him the Academy prize and furnished a precedent for Zola. Muni now gets about $100,000 a picture...
...like a schoolteacher, awarding "A1" to those scenes which have good dramatic values and also fit him perfectly. His contract allows him to reject any role he does not like. He rejects four out of five. What his next part will be is not known. With the completion of Zola, Muni began a long vacation. In October he and his wife will start on a trip round the world, avoiding war zones. During shooting of Zola, Muni gave several intimations that Zola's epitaph in the film might mark his own permanent farewell to Hollywood. The possibility...