Box office digest (Dec 1938-Dec 1939)

DECEMBER 20, 1938 7 "Dawn Patrol" Smash For Box Offices i . • WARNER BROTHERS (EST. 135%) Executive Producer Hal. B. Wallis Associate Producer Robert Lord Director Edmund Goulding Screenplay Seton I. Miller, Don Totheroh Original John Monk Saunders Stars Errol Flynn Featured: Basil Rathbone, David Niven, Donald Crisip, Melville Cooper, Barry Fitzgerald, Carl Esmond, Peter Willes, Morton Lowry, Michael Brooke, James Burke, Stuart Hall, Herbert Evans, Sidney Bracy. Photographer Tony Gaudio Time 108 Minutes Set this in definitely as one of your top money makers for the coming year. It will do sensational business. Every element, from timeliness of subject to sock dramatic strength, is present for a natural box office combination. Warner Brothers greet the new year with bells ringing, and with bells on. The subject was a box office winner some eight years ago, and Jack Warner and Hal Wallis must have consulted a crystal gazer to determine the moment of all moments to bring it back to the screen. They assigned direction to Edmund Goulding, who went two-fistedly Sidney Toler’s loth CENTURY-FOX (EST. 80%) Associate Producer John Stone Director H. Bruce Humberstone Original Screenplay Charles Belden Based on the character created by Earl Derr Diggers Star Sidney Toler Featured: Phyllis Brooks, Sen Yung, Eddie Collins, John King, Claire Dodd, George Zucco, Robert Barrat, Marc Lawrence, Richard Lane, Layne Tom, Jr., Paul Harvey, Philip Aim. Photographer Charles Clarke Time 65 Minutes To appeace a palpitating public, let us report that Charlie Chan is in safe hands. Charlie will go marching on to cheerful tunes in the person of Sidney Toler. It isn’t an imitation Warner Oland characterization that Toler delivers, but it is a thoroughly satisfying, neatly shaded Charlie Chan. With that important fact recorded, we can ”Next Time I R. K. O. (EST. 75%) Executive Producer Lee Marcus Producer Cliff Reid Director Garson Kanin Screenplay John Twist, Helen Meinardi Story Thames Williamson Featured: Lucille Ball, James Ellison, Lee Bowman, Granville Bates, Mantan Moreland. Photographer Russell Me tty Time 65 Minutes From a story germ that stems somewhere in the "My Man Godfrey” and "It Happened One Night” classifications, Director Garson Kanin, and screenplay writer John Twist and Helen Meinardi, have taken three junior Radio stars and sizzled along to a screwball comedy that to the spectacular effects, without ever losing his unerring skill at depicting dynamic human emotion in repressed eloquence. And they rounded up a seventeen-jewel cast to interpret an intelligently written, skillfully constructed script by Seton I. Miller and Don Tothero. For the marquee there is Errol Flynn, and he delivers a cleverly keyed performance, but from the screen it is David Niven’s picture. The latter player has the more colorful role in its emotional changes, and he comes through with flying colors. It is a performance that will send his stock to new heights. Canny Sam Goldwyn has something in this boy. Basil Rathbone’s performance of the squadran commander, torn between demands of duty and pangs of conscience, is the skillfully shaded deliniation that one would expect of Rathbone. Support, headed by Donald Crisp, is all up tc the high standard of the entire production, with Earl Esmond, as a German aviator prisoner with his dialogue entirely in the Teutonic tongue, getting the stand-out opportunity. The theme of the picture, the almost use proceed to the equally important one that "Charlie Chan in Honolulu” will take rank among the best of the pictures in the series. Producer John Stone has provided a story that is a neat blend of the comedy in the detective’s unique character, suspenseful chills, and sufficient of "whodunit” mystery to hold the interest to the end. Bruce Humberstone, who has directed enough of the Chan pictures to warrant considerable of the credit for the series’ success, takes these elements and dresses them skillfully in major league direction. Humberstone, though young in years, is a screen veteran, and his touch is sure in balancing the laugh with the thrill, in maintaining pace, and in attaining atmosphere within budget limitations. This time, the excellent original screenplay provided by Charles Belden, introduces our new Chan in the bosom of his numerous progeny, then plunges him into the solution of a murder aboard a freighter just arriving in gives the exhibitor at least one break in his "B” purchases. "Next Time I Marry” is good fun, and perhaps of more lasting importance, serves notice that this newcomer Garson Kanin, who directed the surprise "A Man To Remember,” is not one of the pan flashers. He steps adroitly from the more serious subject to this frothy 65 minutes of gayety. And in doing so, he has done a fine job in drawing attention to the possibilities in the three up and coming Radio players, James Ellison, Lucille Ball, and Lee Bowman. It all concerns the flighty Lucille and what happens to her when she buys a husband from less sacrifice of the youth of the world to feed the god of War, will be remembered from the early version. It takes on new timeliness because of every newspaper headline of the past year, and without sacrificing story strength, the producers have this time emphasised the theme with powerful results. Skillfull is the manner of presenting the preachment against the horror and futility of war, without preaching to the detriment of entertainment. It is in the action of spectacular air battles culminating in Flynn’s solo raid that destroys the enemy’s munitions base, the drama of men who must send mere boys to their death inadequately trained and inadequately equipped, the comedy of character unfoldment by men who are boys at heart, jibing at what they fear to fear, that the picture takes on its strength. WHAT THE OTHER FELLOW SAID: REPORTER: “An exciting, thrilling dram atic picture on the utter waste of war. It is magnificently written, directed and acted and packs a tremendous wallop.” VARIETY: “Strong, legitimate drama of fighting men doing their battle chores is this superbly made ‘Dawn Patrol.’ ” Honolulu. Affairs are complicated by the efforts of Chan’s Number Two son to become a sleuth, but after another murder, and the weeding out of a plentitude of suspects all ends happily. Eddie Collins provides a fine running vein of comedy as the guardian of a wild animal consignment aboard ship. Sen Yung steps into Key Luke’s shoes satisfactorily. George Zucco does a good menace job. WHAT THE OTHER FELLOWS SAID: REPORTER: “It was a happy thought that made 20th Century-Fox decide to continue the Charlie Chan series and a very happy thought, indeed, to nominate Sidney Toler for the job of carrying-on. VARIETY: “Sidney Toler makes his debut in the late Warner Oland’s role in ‘Charlie Chan in Honolulu.’ Making no effort to fill the same figurative shoes that Oland wore, he moves in without any attempt to imitate, and, because of this, he stands better than an even chance of building for himself a following equal to that won by his predecessor.” the W. P. A. rolls in order to collect the coin due under her father’s will by meeting its insistence on a one hundred per cent American. Of course she intends all along to quickly ditch the American, Jimmy, and hitch herself to a title in the possession of Lee Bowman. Complications enter — and the fun. With the familiar basis, and nothing superextra for the production budget, it can be seen that the entertainment depends on the material provided by the scripters both in dialogue and situation, and the ability of the director to keep the whirligig in motion. They delivered, and the Radio department guided by Lee Marcus can take another bow. Marry’’ Entertaining "B’’ "Chan’’ Debut Success 4t»