Evening Star Newspaper, June 29, 1930, Page 87

- Memories of You. Hollywood Scientists, Analyzing Emotional Reactions of Movie Stars for New “Smellies,” Find Everyone Susceptible to Association of Dainty Fragrance With Memory of Yesterday’s Romance. BY ALICE L. TILDESLEY. OW that it is announced we are to add “smellies” to our movies and talkies, it is interesting to discover that fragrances induce emotion, ac- cording to experiments conducted at the University of Southern California, Maybe you will respond to the subtle scent of mignonette gently released by the new proc- ess at the cinema unrolls its action on the screen, but then, again, maybe the emotion in- duced in you by this modest flower isn’t in tune with that the producer would desire. That’s going to be just too bad! Audiences should be psychcgalvanographed if producers are to get anywhere with ‘“‘smellies.” Dr. Karl T. Waugh, dean of the College of Liberal Sciences at the University of Southern California and one of the world's authorities on psychology, has made a series of experiments with the “temperament detector” to find out just how much the odors mean. The scientific name for the detector is psychogalvanograph. It is a delicate electrical instrument connected to the subject’s hands, and every fluctuation of the heart, every vari- ation in respiration and thousands of minute changes in the body brought about by conflict- ing emotions are amplified and measured by its means on an electric recorder. AP'I'SR a month of experiments conducted among students at the university, Dean Waugh decided that screen players should be more sensitive to emotional impulses, since they deal in emotion and perhaps more could be learned from their reactions. The youth of students, too, was felt to be a drawback, while older persons in ordinary walks of life might be too self-conscious to react. He therefore brought his apparatus to one of the large studios, together with another in- strument, the oleofactometer, which measures certain perfumes for subjects to smell. The oleofactometer is an invention of Capt. Hum- phrey Read, F. P. G. S., the scientist who aided Dean Waugh in his experiments. Players who happened to be on the Jot that day were asked to come to Stage 6, be hooked up to the detector and inhale a succession of perfumes for the benefit of science. Dorothy Sebastian is usually considered a sweetly serene young person, but the uncanny detector discovered that in reality she is seeth- ing with emotion. Various perfumes were poured into the cone of the oleofactometer and given to Dorothy in whiffs. New-mown hay set the needle of the detector bobbing wildly, because it brought back to the girl in the chair scenes from her Ala- bama childhood. “She’'s very temperamental,” declared the dean. “Temperament is really a mental sensi- tivity to impressions and the ability to start a train of thought which leads to certain emo- tions from a suggestion. A woman could not be a good actress without temperament, for she must take a suggestion, from script or di- rector, and through a train of thought build it into an emotion to transfer to stage or screen. “Nobody can fool the machine. It has two little electrodes touching the skin and a tiny current flows. If the heart beats a fraction faster, it pumps blood from the surface of the skin, the skin becomes more resistant and the electrical flow in the machine wavers. This tiny fluctuation is stepped up with vacuum tubes, like a radio impulse, so we can measure it. “Buster Keaton, for instance, sat with his usual poker face. Not a change of position, a fleeting expression or the droop of an eyelash disclosed what he was thinking of in his tests. “But the needle knew. Every time a perfume whiff started a new thought train the indicator showed it, try as he did to conceal it by remain- ing expressionless as only Buster can do. “We pa sed the perfume of lavender through the oleofactometer and recorded a sign of pleas- ure; switched suddenly to odor of limburger cheese and the needle sharply reversed, showing - active distaste, though the comedian never moved a muscle of body or face. This is just to show you that you can't fool the machine.” Dean Waugh nct only measured tempera- ments in terms of mathematics but demon- strated to what emotions the players most quickly respond. Buster Keaton, though a comedian, does not react to funny ideas so rapidly as he does to sad ones. Any suggestion of pathos promptly brought re:ponse from the magic needle on the dial. Strangely enough, Rosetta Duncan, the clown- ing half of the Duncan Sisters team, was most easily moved by sad music. while Vivian, the more serious-seeming sister, responded to flowers and bright lights. Both girls, connected to the machine at the come time and given the same perfume to inhale, had different reactions, Roesetta being moved almost to tears by scents - tnat made Vivian gay. - EDDA HOPPER proved the most interesting subject tested, her temperament being so complex that she is to be the subject of an hour's test before the psychology class at the university. “To me there iz nothing particularly new in the idea that fragrances affect us emotionally,” declared Hedda. “I think most of us know that a breath of certain flower scent, a salty whiff of the sea, even the smell of axle grease in the sun, can bring back a memory more vividly than words. “The first time we are conscious of a certain fragrance it bzcomes assoclated in our minds with an emotion felt at that time, and as we go along through life we respond to that certain fragrance with that same emotion. “Tuberoses always mean romance to me be- cause they are associated in my mind with my first love. People who know me well alwavs send me tuberoses or Chinese lilies instead of orchids or gardenias. Those tall, pink, fragrant Chinese lilies give me a similar sensation of un- utterable joy. “I remember going out one night to th2 Hearst ranch and walking in the morning witih the feeling that I had died and gone to heaven. 1 seemed to be floating out on a sea of perfume. Later I found that outside the guest bungalow 1 wes occupying Chinese lilies had been planted in a wide border and I was smelling them. “The reason Dean Waugh had difficulty in his tests with the college boys and girls is that youngsters are so busy living they have no time to analyze emotion. As we grow older, we begin to observe that a certain strain of music or a certain gorgeous perfume puts us in a mood to respond to emotion. “In the days of silent pictures, if T had to cry in a scene, I used to ask for ‘Celeste Aida.' I first heard that when Caruso sang it and I sat entranced listening with the man I loved. Now that we can’t have music to help us cry, perhaps they'll rig up the oleofactometer and give us the correct odor to help us emote! “Driftwood has an odd odor when you burn if, and it always takes me back to my home on Nantucket Island, where we burned ncthing els2. I used to sit by the fire watching the differeat- colored lights that flared out in the wood and imagining the tales it could tell—the pirates, the clipper ships, the lost sailors, the¢ mermaids at the bottom of the sea. Driftwood smoke would be called for if I should be depicting ad- venturous romance. . “Suppose a tragedy were to happen to me t>- day, while I held tuberoses in my hands. Th2 fragrance of the flowers would not hereafter mean tragedy to me, because I would associate them with that first romance and not with sor- THE SUNDAY STAR, WASHINGTON, D. C, JUNE 29, 1930. 15 b S et e S R eSS Hedda Hopper declares that a breath of a certain flower, a salty whift of the sea or even the smell of axle grease in the sun can bring back a memory more vividly than words. row. But if I should meet this tragedy when I sat on a porch bowered in honeysuckle—this scent now meaning nothing whatever to me— hereafter it would bring back the terrible hap- pening. “A letter from my boy yesterday illustrates how an odor can mean something tc us. Bi'l is at school in Catalina. He has a 15-foot boat znd he was out in it with three boys last Sun- ay. “‘Oh, mother,’ he writes, ‘we were out in a terrific storm, so that the sail was almost bent double and the sea was almost up our noses. I never knew what happiness was until today.’ “After this, the smell of the sea in a storr: w:l mean joy to Bill, whether or not he knows why.” ACCORDING to Dean Waugh's experiments, Lon Chaney is the mathematical type. He puts the elements of an idea together in his mind and when they are assembled he reaches a fixed, certain and forecful conclusion. With him, a thought train sends the impulse needle Buster Keaton kept a perfect poker face while different odors were wafted to him. but the psychogalvanagrapl: recordrd his reactions, slowly but evenly across the dial to a fixed point, where it sticks. Every one thinks of little Pauline Garon as a volatile French flapper, but she reacted to the dean's tests in a way most unexpected. The needle leaped about when serious thoughte were suggested and was stationary when lighter subjects were mentioned. The French Revolution seemed to start an amazingly com- plicated thought train, although she merely smiled and evaded explanation of thé phenonn- enon after the test. Gwen Lee, who says she thinks blondes cin look dumber than brunettes, although her ovn locks are golden, ought to have been & doctsr, according to the scientific results of tie detector. “She has an explosive temperament.” statc i Dean Waugh. “Given an impression, her i .d slowly turns it over and then leaps to & suddcn reaction that sends the needle vaulting on the indicator. - This denotes not a quick temp.r but a faculty of suddenly grasping an idea in its entirety and with full force. Such a tera- perament would be ideal in a lawyer or a phy- sician. If Miss Lee were a doctor she would Le a marvel at snap diagnosis.” Testing the doctor's theory of emctkn aroused by fragrances, stars on other lots we e interviewed. Bernice Claire, of an age with those coll e vouths who proved not sc good as subjects of experiment, named without hesitation the per- fume that will send her spirits skyrocketing. “Tea roses!"” she cried. “When I was siarte ing my first vaudeville tour over a -circuit around New York City I did a ‘single’—an act by myself—20 minutes of concertizing. P.ople told me notody wanted to hear a girl simply stand up and sing, and after my first perform- ance I was ready to cry because I thought per- haps the eroakers were right and the applause I had received was just polite. “When I got back to my dressing room = long box was handed in to me with a mnote signcd ‘Miss M.’ thanking me for the most enjcvab'e 20 minutes the writer had ever spent in a theater. Was I pleased? Was I thrilled? Was I on top of the world? Why, the mere sug- gestion of tea roses would push Dean Waugh's needle into high. “But if I smell a combination of resin and wax—a substance that was used to render my dancing teacher's floor smooth—I am back in childhcod again, feeling bewildered and un- happy. “My mother wanted me to have all the ad- vantages she had missed, and when I was 3 years old my dancing lessons began. I was so little I didn't know what it was all about. I was always frightened, and my earliest memory is of that studio and a not overly pat.ent danc- ing teachker. I ran off into a corner every time her back was turned and howled before the end of the lessons. At length my mother real- ized that I was too young and instruction was postponed, but always when I smell that wax and resin I'm low in my mind.” (Coryright, 1830.