Photoplay (Jul - Dec 1939)

THE HERO PINNED A MEDAL ON ME We Cover the Studios There I stood — staring at the rows of medals on the General's chest — too dazzled to speak. Suddenly — "Can that be a package of Beeman's in your hand?" whispered the General. His smile outshone the medals when I managed to stammer, "Y-yes! Have a stick?" "That flavor's refreshing as a cool shower after a hot march ! " the General declared. "Snappy as a band on parade! Give me Beeman's every time for real pep and tang! Miss — you deserve a medal!" And he made me one then and there— out of Beeman's shiny foil! **IDS DIGESTION carnation. Ty dances with Edna May Oliver and a hundred tail-coated and bare-shouldered extras fill out the floor. The band swings it— "The Back to Back." This dance might turn out to be one of those Lambeth Walk affairs. It's the kind a whole floor full of dancers do, and it looks like fun no end. Partners back into each other, stick their arms out and rock them up and down, hotfooting it about meanwhile. We back away from the "Back to Back" to Samuel Goldwyn's, where, inspired by Jimmy Roosevelt or something, the lot is busy shooting the Jascha Heifetz picture, "Music School." It's about a slum district boys' symphony and, you guessed it, Jascha Heifetz steps in at the eleventh hour to make their concert a big success. Nothing new, but packing enough suspense and heart throbs to keep you interested between the marvelous violin melodies of the master. Joel McCrea and Andrea Leeds go along with Jascha for a movie ride, so to speak. The real dramatic parts go to Walter Brennan and a curlyheaded youngster named Gene Reynolds. Maybe you remember him as the crippled kid in "Boys Town." The set is the room where the poor kids' orchestra practices. The walls are covered with battered secondhand instruments. It's the cellar of a settlement house presided over by Walter Brennan. On another stage near-by, fifty child members of the California Junior Symphony are making music, but here only Gene Reynolds and Walter hold forth under the expert eye of roly-poly director, Archie Mayo. Everything is hushed. People speak in whispers. They're trying to get a sad scene. Our shoes squeak. Poor Gene has lost his dog, his best pal, and Walter Brennan is trying to be sympathetic. Gene bursts into tears. They rehearse the scene several times. Then Archie Mayo puts his hand on Gene's shoulder. "Do you feel the urge, Gene?" he asks. "In a minute," replies the boy. "Let me know when you're ready," says Archie. Gene stands looking at the wall. Suddenly he turns around, his eyes glistening in the arc lights. "Okay," says Archie Mayo softly, "let's do it." One take — that's all — and it's a long, tearful scene. At the end Archie Mayo booms, "Couldn't be better!" At Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, "On Borrowed Time," that dramatic stage commentary on death, gets the production spotlight. Lionel Barrymore stars, with another new boy actor, Bobs Watson, running a close second in the role Peter Holden made famous on the stage. M-G-M wanted Peter for the part originally, but, to their surprise, they found he'd grown too big in a few months, so eightyear-old Bobs got the job. Lionel Barrymore is Gramps, an old man with a great love for his grandson, Bobs. The drama is an old man's fight to ward off death until he can assure the boy's future which wicked relatives threaten. Sir Cedric Hardwicke personifies Death and Lionel gets him up an apple tree, but when he realizes that Death is a blessing he lets him get down again. Lionel has a day off, but we watch (Continued jrom page 65) Bobs, a chubby, freckle-faced kid, Una Merkel and that stony-faced screeniemeanie, Eily Malyon, do a street scene under the direction of Harold Bucquet. The scene is a traveling shot, a good city block long. Eily Malyon stalks grimly along the village street, while Una dashes in and out of the scene. When Eily gets going, a sound track follows beside her talking merrily along, although Eily doesn't open her lips. It's her thoughts, told in "asides," as in "Strange Interlude" — remember? The sound track talks and Eily stalks — things are going swell and then— Around the corner of the street, smack into the scene comes, of all things, a baby elephant led by a chimpanzee! They're fugitives from a "Tarzan" picture shooting on the same lot. Also in work at M-G-M are "6.000 Enemies" and "Maisie Was a Lady." The latter, with Robert Young, Ann Sothern, Ian Hunter and Ruth Hussey, is a ranch romance between a honkytonk dancer on the loose and one of nature's western noblemen. But it's 'way out west on location at Chatsworth — so Walter Pidgeon and Rita Johnson catch our eagle eye on the "6,000 Enemies" set. I HE general idea of "6,000 Enemies" is love laughing out loud at locksmiths, with a bit of forgive-thy-enemies thrown in. Walter is a militant district attorney who sends a lot of people to prison and then gets framed and eased behind bars himself. There he meets his former victims and one of them, Rita, also framed, puts his heart in jail, too. We watch Walter and Rita in a prison laundry. The whole set is clammy and stifling with steam they're piping in from a boiler near by. Giant wrench in hand, Walter, one of those handy men around the pen, is supposed to be fixing the pipes. Each time he twists a bolt prop men pump steam at him and he ducks back. Finally they get just the right amount of it and the scene gets rolling. We roll on, too, right past Walter Wanger's sleeping studio, where "Winter Carnival," the Dartmouth ski epic, is still hammer locking production without a suitable script, out to Pasadena and the famous Rose Bowl where Warner Brothers are already making your next fall's gridiron entertainment — "Lighthorse Harry." This is Bert Wheeler's first picture since his pal, Bob Woolsey, died. There's no doubt Bert misses Bob tremendously, but personal feelings have nothing to do with show business. Bert's a comic and comic he must be. For "Lighthorse Harry" is aimed at laughs. The entire Southern California football squad is filling the air with pigskins and grunts as we emerge on the Rose Bowl turf. It's hottish in Pasadena, but Bert is standing around in a fur coat, one of the "benny" variety. What a football game! Plays resemble a cross between the Statue of Liberty, Minnesota Shift, Dipsy-Doodle and the Lambeth Walk. And through it all streaks Bert Wheeler, wrapped up in his fur "benny," with the sun at ninety-five degrees! After he has made five acrobatic touchdown runs through the entire USC squad, we have melted away five pounds in sympathy and Bert looks like a wet cat. We decide to postpone our football until the proper season and head for Hollywood. "Give Me a Child" is the other War ner Brothers production of the month. If you remember "Life Begins," you've got it. Loretta Young and Eric Linden did the first filming of this maternity ward drama, seven years ago. Now Geraldine Fitzgerald, the Irish colleen of "Dark Victory" and "Wuthering Heights," makes a pass at Hollywood stardom, via the lying-in hospital. Jeffrey Lynn essays Eric Linden's part and the other blessed eventers are Gladys George, Spring Byington, Jean Sharon and Gale Page.. Johnny Davis, a recent prospective first-time papa in real life, gets money for his nail-biting, in the same kind of part. The story is about a girl in prison, sent to a maternity hospital to have her baby. There are really two divisions of the story — the mamas in the ward, the papas sweating blood in the halls. All action is in the hospital, where the types — the tough mother, the young unmarried mother, the mother who has a baby every year, the nurses, doctors — all mix up in a "Grand Hotel" type of story. The set is the white cot-dotted maternity ward. All the actresses are in bed. We watch a few scenes, meticulously checked by two technical adviser doctors. The place is alive with real babies, some crying, others asleep. Geraldine, Jean, Spring and company all stay in their cots and chat away as the cameras line up, time when standins usually work. "It's easier than climbing out of bed," says Jean lazily. "And we mothers have to conserve our strength." uOLUMBIA is a beehive of excitement with Joan Blondell, Melvyn Douglas, Walter Connolly and Alan Curtis cavorting in a comedy with the marqueemurdering title of "Good Girls Go to Paris." When we look in on a gaudy set patterned after El Morocco, the New York nitery, three rhumba teachers are slaving to teach the stars the latest Cuban jitterbugging. They look so wrapped up in their work that we pass quietly on to RKO, noting mainly that Joan is wearing the new knee -length skirts in this one. And that Dick Powell, as usual, is hanging around the set watching his wife work. They're still honeymooning, those two. The aviation entree of the month is cooking at RKO. "Five Came Back," it's called. "The Dove," that old standby which Noah Beery and Norma Talmadge did years ago, is also up for a remake at RKO, with Leo Carrillo and Steffi Duna. "Five Came Back" is the dramatic record of an air transport full of passengers forced down in a South American jungle. Five can ride the limping ship back to civilization; the rest must perish in the jungle. Stages Nine and Ten at RKO have been joined together to house a jungle, with space big enough for a plane's runway, five hundred trees and two thousand shrubs, vines and creepers, with artificial streams, swamps, lagoons and waterfalls. In one corner is parked a real transport plane, slightly cracked up. In another, a plane's cabin is hoisted on rockers. The camera peeks in the windows of this where the big cast is grouped for the scene. The cast: Chester Morris, pilot, Patric Knowles, steward, Wendy Barrie and Kent Taylor, eloping couple, Lucille Ball, easy lady, Allen Jenkins, mugg, C. Aubrey Smith, archeological lecturer, and Joseph Calleia, detective, with his pris 74 PHOTOPLAY