The box office check-up of 1935 (1936)

Charles Vidor director HIS FAMILY TREE THE GREAT SHADOW RKO-RADIO LAWRENCE HAZARD AT M-C-M WARREN DUFF • WRITER OF BOX OFFICE CHAMPIONS Broadway Gondolier Sweet Music FasFiions of 1 934 Friends of Mr. Sweeney FOR WARNER BROS. -FIRST NATIONAL sprinkled with lobster traps and fishing nets drying in the sun. A Sloucesterman schooner rolled with the tide. In "Way Down East" the tank became the raging Kennebec river in Maine, filled with plunging ice floes. This frigid layout provided one of the most thrilling scenes in film annals. Huge blocks of ice, ingeniously contrived from five-gallon cans and a liberal application of plaster, pitched and churned down the raging stream, moving rapidly towards the falls. These ice cakes, too, had to be substantial, for aboard one floating cake precariously clung Rochelle Hudson and Edward Trevor, while Henry Fonda galloped to the rescue, leaping like a mountain goat from floe to floe, somewhat reminiscent of the baying bloodhounds who pursued poor Eliza. Huge turbines stirred the water at the rate of 1,000,000 gallons an hour. A dozen wind machines whipped the surface of the stream, blowing cornflake snow in blizzardly fashion upon the actors, who were bundled to the ears in heavy winter clothing. On the sideline the property man stirred gallons of sunburn lotion, for the scene was shot on one of the hottest days of the year and technicians who worked in the water up to their armpits were as red as spanked babies. Not long ago stark drama was unintentionally provided in the tank when Bill Robinson and John Boles nearly lost their lives when pinned beneath floating debris. An inhalator squad was called before Robinson could be revived. On this occasion the tank represented a swamp for Shirley Temple's "The Littlest Rebel." Not long ago, through an adroit bit of scene shifting, the tank became a canal flowing gently through the Ohio Valley, providing the background for "The Farmer Takes a Wife," with Janet Gaynor and Henry Fonda. A realistic barge, propelled by hidden wires, was the stage for an intense bit of dialogue between Miss Gaynor, Charles Bickford, Slim Summerville and a lad who identified himself as John Wilkes Booth. The hillside running up from the edge of the canal was verdant with grass. Sheep grazed peacefully, gazing curiously at the horses who plodded along the towpath. For several years the tank represented a Shanghai water-front. It rarely changed. Row upon row of dilapidated houses stretched back from the water, terminating in the distance in a painted drop which melted perfectly into the foreground. 'The tides rose and fell against the piling, as completely dirty as any Chinese harbor could be when offal is dumped promiscuously overboard. Along this harbor front such pictures as "Grand Canary," "Shanghai Madness" [TURN TO PAGE 162] 160 THE BOX OFFICE CHECK-UP OF 1935