National Board of Review Magazine (Jan 1939 - Jan 1942)

January 1942 11 wonder what this will lead audiences to believe of the familiar final clinches in forthcoming pictures where the ending finds a two-day romance consummating in marriage. If another reel had been made would the hero have turned out to be a listless lout who forgot about his romance a month later, like Miss Oberon's big heart-break, or a sot like Miss Scott's husband? Ah, these are deep waters. Screen writing had its nadirs as well as its zeniths, however; witness the writer with head away who decreed that Dr. Kildare's eternal bride be splattered all over the street by a truck. Another strange affair resulted when some tear-gas bombs wandered away from the plug-uglies' lot and popped up in a Gene Autry opus, thereby upsetting all one's beliefs about the loyalty of men to guns in the woolly west. The scenic artists marched on in 1941 as never before, their greatest triumph being, we herald, that stream on the M.G.M. lot which was so delicately attuned as to mute its ripplings to a dulcet accompaniment during the exchange of love vows by the stars, while it changed its voice to a note of sweet but enigmatic sympathy during the tryst of the heroine and the 2nd male lead and just went entirely silent when this last named man was finally jilted. This may have been the reason for our Johnny's resigning from the Boy Scouts, for he recently complained, after a nice outing, of the vulgar intonings of a brook au naturel. The most harrowing news of the year was the sad report that Ann Sheridan uses artificial finger-nails for her films. It seems, though it is a bitter pill to take, that Ann dislikes overly-long nails. But be cheered, for it has been announced to the world by the same source that Olivia de Havilland can actually sew on a button and even did it for none other than Elliot Nugent, lucky fellow! to prove it. For the most depraved publicity of the year, we nominate an item on the program of the Surrealist Festival at the 5th Ave. Playhouse which ran — "We don't wish to break up your home but if you do throw light things at one another because of this show, hold us responsible — The Management." What are we coming to? — substituting frankness for all the timehonored virtues of the Noble Pressman? 1941 also saw the outcropping of a fascinating new sport to replace miniature golf. We are playing it all the time and love it! It was invented in connection with a picture about the Okefenokee swamp in the advertising for which the skull and cross bones are used as a symbol of terror. The game is, upon receiving one of the publicists' little blanks, to fill in a square with your own favorite, personal symbol of terror. "Is it man — beast — idea? These days there are symbols for everything. What's yours for terror?" Thus the little blank hurtles the challenge right into your lap. The instructions are, "Draw it or paste in a news clipping or photo." And they offer tickets to the movie as a prize, though they warn that the game is only for "thrill-seekers!" We like to think of ourselves as in this class and have a wealth of ideas for our terrifying symbols. We get them from our best-loved blurb-artists. For example, pictures of Miss Miranda's headgear composed of portable truck-farms in glorious Technicolor make us clutch our collective throat. The picture we saw in an ad of Humphrey Bogart on that high sierra, or the one of Orson Welles towering over a horde of extras really was terrific and gave us a genuine taste of the well-known willies. The mere thought of Gene Tierney (who is out-Lamouring Dorothy) on the same screen with Victor Mature, the latter in a fez to boot, makes our blood run cold. And as for the nights of wide-awake horror suffered in contemplation of Erroll Flynn pitted against 6,000 Indians in the re-enactment of that famous last stand — well, we just can't decide which of a thousand things terrify us the most. The only thing left for 1942 to contribute will be to have a chorine jump right off the page advertising, for instance, that Hey-hey in the Hayloft which Joel McCrea says he directed in his new film, Sullivan's Travels. She would be just one of 999 blonde bombshells appearing in the film and she would pick the innocent reader up by the scruff of the neck and throw him headlong into the theatre where her picture was playing.