Picture Play Magazine (Mar-Jul 1929)

Where the Stars Meet 63 "Flaming Lives" at length has been finished. The star has gone to Europe to recuperate, and the director has gone to Matteawan for the same purpose. The picture has been cut and recut, titled and retitled, previewed and re-previewed. Seven minor studio executives and two scenario writers have been discharged during the controversies regarding its editing. It has had a gala opening at Grauman's Chinese Theater, and a long run on Broadway, with a synchronized score and phony sound effects. A distorted, Gargantuan likeness of Fanya Fotheringill clutching an equally hideous representation of her latest Latin leading man, with the name of the picture in enormous, red letters, adorns the diminutive lobby of an allnight movie house, let us say on the Bowery, or on the faded Barbary Coast. The meaner districts of any large city will do. All for ten cents, ladies and gentlemen, you can see Fanya Fotheringill, in "Flaming Lives," just off Broadway, and Pete Casey, in a five-reel Western, "The Range Outlaw." In addition to these attractions, you can smoke, buy candy bars and chewing gum from the hawkers roving the aisles, whistle if the picture displeases you, pick a fight at the drop of a hat, or sleep. The last is quite an inducement. The joint is open all night, it is warm, and it is cheaper than a flop house. Furthermore, you can listen to the fat, weary man at the piano who plays and plays and plays. He works two six-hour shifts, and although his touch is not of the best, his industry is above reproach. He has no music — he needs none. He sits at the battered piano, viewing with a jaded and atrabilious eye the picture on display. As he watches he bangs out tunes theoretically pertinent to the action. I'd like to take Fanya Fotheringill, or one of her numerous colleagues, to an all-night movie some time. For instance, the one in which I saw "Flaming Lives." You pay a dime and you find your own seat. It's wise to be cautious in doing this, because you may be scraping the shins of the principal in the latest ax murder. On one side is a jaded patron of the drama, fast asleep, and snoring quite audibly. On the other is a little colored lad eating peanuts. The man directly ahead is chewing tobacco. The star is about to sweep into the studio, and lights and lesser actors are kicked about impartially. Modest Fanya insists on barred doors for boudoir There is a constant mumble of conversation, and one gets glimpses of the screen through billows of smoke. I stand up to remove my coat. Wham! comes a missile on the back of my neck. It is tin foil from a candy bar, wadded into a lethal weapon. I sit down hastily, deciding to let the matter drop right there. Fanya, so modest that the set is barred to every one when she must appear in negligee, flashes across the screen, displaying a considerable proportion of her anatomy in a pleasurably revealing slip. She is greeted by whistling. "Some broad, huh ?" says a thick accent behind me. "Oh-h-h — not so hot. Forty if she's a day, and I unnerstand she's fulla hop all the time." The Fanya fan is still loyal. "She'd do, anyway." "Gimme Clara Bow." Thus are the charms which bring $12,500 a week, and 700 fan letters a day, disposed of. Three young mugs, as tough as casting directors, clamber between the rows of seats, each careful to bump my shins, and manage to disturb the sleeping customer at my side. "Whatinell's ziddea, yuh hooligans, cancha pickupyer dogs ?" "Whazzat?" "Yuh heard me." Sock, bam, crash. The bouncer comes on the run, and tosses all principals out into the street, where they may argue without interfering with the unreeling of the arts. The flurry of excitement over, the crowd settles down to an apathetic study of the threehundred-thousand-dollar picture which took four months to make. "You are an unspeakable cad, Montgomery Trevor," says a title, presumably from the lips of Fanya. "Take that, you big pansy !" cries a voice from the house. A scene two hundred feet long, and the .making of which necessitated a seven-hundredmile location trip, flutters into view. Fanya is being rowed over a beautiful lake by her mascaraed leading man. The long-suffering pianist brightens, and launches into the opening bars of "Then We'll Row, Row, Row." A drunk wanders down the aisle into a chair already being occupied and is ejected from it. "Whoopee !" he shouts. Sock! comes an empty pasteboard box. Silence. [Continued on page 1C5]