For "Black Friday" Scene Said Successful As a result of its successful "experiment the other evening in hypnotizing Bela Lugosi for a scene in "Black Friday," Universal is convinced that entirely new and unsuspected vistas have been opened to the cinema, writes Douglas W. Churchill to the New York "Times." Evolved strictly as a publicity stunt by the press department, the effect on Lugosi was so amazing that the studio's exploitation engineers believe that hypnosis can be practised on writers to make them finish scripts, on press agents (although one member of the department doubted there would be any difference), on critics to assure good notices, but most of all on actors—Garbo could be made to talk, Tyrone Power could really live Ferdinand de Lesseps, Paul Muni could be repressed and Olivia de Havilland could be persuaded to play in "Saturday's Children."
To reassure doubters, Boris Karloff, ce-star of the epic, stated he was positive Lugosi was hypnotized because he had never seen his fellow-actor keep his back to the camera for so long.
Manley P. Hall, student of the occult and the man who, through his astrological knowledge, guided Warners' "When Were You Born?" which evidently was made when the planets were in conflict, was asked to conduct the experiment. A select group of the press who could be depended upon to regard the affair in its proper light were invited as witnesses. Lugosi, looking like a benign Irish cop, was placed in a chair before Hall while the spell was woven. Hypnotized, Lugosi made his way to a two-sided set which was: the closet in which the actor was locked and in which he was to suffocate.
"Now You're Suffocating"
Hall went over the script once with the hypnotized man, the cameras turned, Hall whispered, "Now you're suffocating," and Lugosi began to nose the cracks in the door demanding, "Let me out." As hysteria began to overcome him he shouted, "Let me out. I'll tell you where the money is. It's in the oven." He voice became shrill and he screamed his lines.
With his shoulders against the door, the set began to give, and then he slumped to the floor. A doctor who was in attendance stepped in, took his pulse, which had increased from normal to 160, which, the physician said, would be actual in a suffocating person, They carried Lugosi to a chair, where Hall awakened him. Examination showed that the player's pulse was again normal. Arthur Lubin, the director, said that the scene was 100 per cent. better than it had been in the afternoon without hypnosis. The one flaw in the experiment was revealed when the camera man said that he had run out of film when the thing was half over.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.