ANTARCTICA: South Pole Vulgarized

ANTARCTICA

“South Pole Vulgarized”

No woman is known to have voyaged to Antarctica. Believing that many a U. S. and British woman wants to go there, Lieut.-Commander J. R. Stenhouse announced in London last week that he will make things as easy for them as possible. Sailing from Southampton next Dec. 10 in “a cozy steamer of 12,500 tons” he will touch at New York and for $2,500 will take anyone who wants to goon an Antarctic cruise.

Frankly trading on the interest created by Rear Admiral Richard Evelyn Byrd and cinema films of his exploit now showing throughout Britain and the U. S., Commander Stenhouse. who sailed to the Antarctic under Shackleton in 1909, said last week in his prospectus:

“We shall visit Admiral Byrd’s old headquarters on the barrier, see Mount Erebus, the steaming volcano, and watch the great whaling fleets in action. . . . The attractions of the Ross Sea are a pure germless atmosphere, 24 hours of sunshine every day at the season in which we shall visit it and a cold, dry, invigorating climate with the temperature around 31° Fahrenheit (one degree below freezing). . . . Our good ship will be especially strengthened to resist ice pressure.”

Wrote the cinema critic of the London Times last week, after viewing the Byrd talkie:

“It is hard to believe that the South Pole can be vulgarized, but this has now been done and been done thoroughly. One would have supposed that the Antarctic plateau would have rejected the atmosphere of the studios; but Paramount has marvelously subdued it—split polysyllabic heroics over it, decorated it with sentimental ribbons, trodden it with captions, tickled it with humor, has supplied it with brass bands and flags and letters from home and photographs of the explorers’ children on the croquet lawns of Massachusetts—with everything except, by some unaccountable omission, ‘love interest’— has in brief, found it snow and left it slush.”

Quite as scathing was the Conservative Morning Post: “This picture reveals the peculiar mentality of Hollywood and those who serve it. For those who have in memory the dignified and profoundly affecting record of the Scott expedition. it must be confessed these escapades turn the whole affair into something of a circus.”

Said the august Liberal Manchester Guardian: “. . . curious layers of vulgarity . . . much beauty but little grandeur. We surely can ask for a little more plain science.”

Only what corresponds in England to the U. S. tabloid press had praise last week for the Byrd talkie. Said the Daily Mail, paper of world’s largest English language daily circulation, blatant mouthpiece of Hearstian Viscount Rothermere:

“Here is the most awesome recital of heroism the screen has yet afforded.”