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THE Hollywood scene, these days, is replete with the usual abundance of renovated ideas. Plots run the gamut, from psychological dramas, filled with suspense, to domestic comedies, overshadowed by tragic family budgets. Down through the years the fundamental principles of melodrama have remained the same: the ingenue has been chaste and chased by the villain and the economic wolf is always at the door. The pattern is still the same, but the approach is different.
In the era of "Murder In The Red Barn," "Streets of New York" and "The Perils of Pauline," the suave, diabolical heavy tied his pale, frail victim to the railroad tracks or lashed her to the log rack in a sawmill. Today he beats her with his brains. Stalking through the picture with a deliberate, threatening gait, he glares at the leading lady through misty, indifferent eyes and suggests insanity. The cruel landowner, with callouses on his heart, no longer waves the overdue mortgage under the invalid mother's nose, but bills from the grocer and high rents still make life unhappy for young couples in love and debt.
But in all of this potpourri of rehash, one little item has endured. Adhering closely to its original form, the Hollywood clinch has become a sacred tradition, as integral a part of a movie as a strip tease is in burlesque.
Varied are the categories into which these embraces may fall, but despite preliminary procedures, by which they may be distinguished, all of them reach an osculatory conclusion and...