First lady of Hollywood
QUESTION Were there any female directors of note in the early days of cinema?
ALICE GUY-BLACHE was a pioneer of early cinema. her output was prolific: from 1896 to 1920, she directed more than 440 films, mostly two-reel shorts lasting five to ten minutes.
Born Alice Ida Antoinette Guy on July 1, 1873, her first job in the industry was as secretary to French film studio boss leon Gaumont at Gaumont-Paris. She made her first film, The cabbage Fairy, for the company in 1896.
The most famous of her Gaumont films is la Vie Du christ in 1906, a 30-minute extravaganza that featured 25 sets, location work and hundreds of extras.
In 1907, she married herbert Blache, an englishman who ran Gaumont’s British and German offices. The couple moved to the u.S. to set up the firm’s operations there. in 1910, Alice Guy established her own studio in Fort lee, New Jersey.
She also directed films for hollywood studios. Some of her best-known were Shadows Of The Moulin Rouge in 1913 and five films the following year: Beneath The czar, The Dream Woman, The Monster And The Girl, The Woman Of Mystery and The lure.
After Guy and Blache divorced in 1922, she returned to France and never made a film again. in 1964, she returned to New Jersey to live with her daughter. She died in 1968, aged 94.
Be Natural: The untold Story Of Alice Guy-Blache, directed by Pamela B. Green, was released last year.
Alice Ramsey, Northaw, Herts. DOROTHY ARZNER was the only female director during hollywood’s Golden Age, directing 16 films between 1927 and 1943. Known for her calm demeanour on set, Arzner always wore a suit and kept her hair cut short. She claimed her career wasn’t hampered by her sex.
Born on January 3, 1897, in San Francisco, Arzner worked for cecil B. DeMille’s brother as a stenographer before becoming a film editor.
The seamless editing of stock footage of bullfights into Rudolph Valentino’s Blood And Sand in 1922 won her acclaim. She made her directorial debut with 1927’s Fashions For Women. During the filming of The Wild Party, starring clara Bow, Arzner invented the boom microphone — putting a mic on the end of what looks like a broom handle to get as close to the actors as possible.
During the Thirties, Arzner made films with the likes of Katharine hepburn in christopher Strong and Joan crawford in The Bride Wore Red.
After her last film, First comes courage in 1943, a war film starring Merle Oberon, Arzner supported the war effort by making training films for the Women’s Army corps.
After World War ii, she became a tutor at the university of california, where Francis Ford coppola was one of her students. She died on October 1, 1979, in la Quinta, california, aged 82.
Isabelle Lowell, Tamworth, Staffs.
QUESTION Was Play-Doh originally a wallpaper cleaner? What other products have taken on a different role than intended?
IT’S true Play-Doh didn’t start out as a modelling material for children.
coal fires left a residue on walls that wasn’t easy to clean off, so in 1933, at the request of the u.S.’s largest supermarket chain Koger, Noah McVicker’s company Kutol Products created a putty that could do the job.
it sold well for a decade, but as more homes moved from coal fires to natural gas, along with the invention of washable vinyl wallpaper, sales plummeted. in the Fifties, McVicker’s nephew, Joe, came up with the idea of rebranding Kutol Wall cleaner as Play-Doh after he had seen nursery school children use the putty to make ornaments. Sales reached nearly $3 million within a few years.
Another product that made a u-turn in the Fifties was bubble wrap. in New Jersey, engineers Alfred W. Fielding and Marc chavannes were trying to create a type of plastic, three- dimensional wallpaper with a paper backing, but it hadn’t gone to plan.
Sealing together two shower curtains to create small air bubbles didn’t succeed as wallpaper, but the air trapped inside created an excellent cushion perfect for packaging and shipping fragile items.
The pair founded the Sealed Air corporation in 1960.
Thanks to its other unintended purpose of popping the bubbles for fun, the last Monday of every January is Bubble Wrap Appreciation Day.
Emilie Lamplough, Trowbridge, Wilts.
QUESTION Many novels about the wartime Navy feature a game called uckers. Was this a variation of the board game ludo? What were the rules?
FURTHER to earlier answers, as a civilian, i was introduced to uckers by a member of the Royal Naval Air Service. i built a large hexagon board, thus enabling three pairs to play using painted draughts pieces as counters.
One omission from the previous answer was mixi blobs: if your opponents can’t pass your block of more than two pieces, their backed-up colour pieces can be knocked off by one of yours if you throw the correct number and land on the stack.
if your opponent is in the home run and you are right behind him, you can block him by a correct throw of the dice.
Once your partner has all his pieces home, his throw of the dice also counts for your pieces, which then fly around the board. A game of uckers can easily exceed four hours.
Patrick J. Green, Bournemouth. The main difference between uckers and ludo is that there is no need for injury time in the latter.
Andrew Will, Plockton, Ross-shire. IS THERE a question to which you have always wanted to know the answer? Or do you know the answer to a question raised here? Send your questions and answers to: Charles Legge, Answers To Correspondents, Daily Mail, 2 Derry Street, London, W8 5TT. You can also fax them to 01952 780111 or you can email them to charles. legge@dailymail.co.uk. A selection will be published but we are not able to enter into individual correspondence.