Hollywood Misogynist

The biggest thing in Martin Kosleck's life was, up to last month, the time he acted in a play in Berlin with Marlene Dietrich. Some time after Miss Dietrich learned English and migrated to Hollywood, emotional young Kosleck also taught himself English (on a phonograph) and went to Hollywood. As an actor, the young German was ignored by the cinema industry. The best he could do was to get a part in The Brothers Karamazov at the Pasadena Community Playhouse. To while the time away, Kosleck taught himself to paint, did some background pictures for a Janet Gaynor film. Last month the Los Angeles Museum took a long chance on this unknown and opened a one-man show of his works. By last week Martin Kosleck had achieved 'a degree of critical fame in and out of Hollywood which would probably never have been his as a cinemactor.

Headliners of Kosleck's show were four savagely misogynistic caricatures of famed Hollywood ladies. While he gave each her measure of good looks, he satirized her character with surrealist trimmings. Joan Crawford's portrait was titled The Most Beautiful Still of the Month, showed her attitudinizing in front of a bed like any tragic stenographer. The Merry Widow showed Jean Harlow in widow's weeds, holding an apple stuck on a knife, against a wallpaper background of orange blossoms. Economy offered Greta Garbo pinching a smartly painted penny and wearing for a hat a sauce pan from whose handle dangled a pair of eyeglasses. Mater Dolorosa was a hollow-cheeked Marlene Dietrich, with heart-shaped buckles on her suspenders, a phonograph record on her head, looking into a magnifying mirror.

More seriously conceived by Painter Kosleck are several able portraits of European actresses and three scenes from Frank Wedekind's play, Spring's Awakening.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.