Canadian Film Weekly (Jan 13, 1943)

January 18th, 1943 Notes From RKO-Radio Sergio Orta, Cuban rhumba dancer who worries when his weight drops below 265 pounds, makes his Hollywood debut in “Seven Days’ Leave,” the Tim Whelan musical co-starring Victor Mature and Lucille Ball. Sergio of the nimble feet was the first to put on a regular revue at New York’s Havana-Madrid some years ago. Producer-director Whelan, discovering him later in a Hollywood night club, wrote in a dancing part in the “Seven Days’ Leave” script for this rotund comedian. In one sequence he dances with Mapy Cortes, Latin-American star. * * Guy Kibbee, for the first time since appearing in vaudeville about a quarter of a century ago, uses his singing voice in “‘Scattergood Swings It,” sixth of the produced by Jerrold T. In the past two and a half decades Kibbee has confined his professional activity to acting. In 1917 he was a song and dance man. This career was brief, for he forsook vaudeville on being signed to a Broadway play. In “Scattergood Swings It” Kibbee sings a patriotic number. * * * Father Gilbert V. Hartke, O.P., one of Washington’s best-known figures in theatrical circles, has been designated by Producer Frederic Ullman, Jr., to play the role of a chaplain in “Army Chaplain,” third in RKO Radio’s series titled “This Is America,” to be released next month. It describes the part played in the war by typical chaplains of the Catholic, Protestant and Jewish faiths. Father Hartke will also serve as technical adviser to ‘Army Chaplain,” which will open in Bataan and flash back to the training of chaplains at Harvard University where Father Hartke is now on location for the first sequences; then to Fort Blanding, Florida. The final scenes are laid in New Guinea. Head of the speech and drama department of Catholic University, Father Hartke is not facing the cameras for the first time. Back in the days of Wallace Beery and Francis X. Bushman, he was playing juvenile roles for the Essanay Film Company. Norm Martin Visits Norm Martin of Columbia’s Calgary branch was in Toronto last week and dropped around to hello the folks at head office. Norm handled advertising before joining the RCAF. SATURDAY NIGHT (Mary Lowry Ross writes about movie polls) Pete Industry has invented a new diversion to take the place of free dinnerware and fortune telling in the lobby; only this time it will be the customers who will be asked to give out. The most recent hobby is opinion sampling in the lobby. If you are a sufficiently representative type you will probably be stopped by a representative type from the studios who will ask you how you liked the picture, what you thought of the casting and the stars, how the film compares with ‘Mrs. Miniver,” what are your ten favorite pictures of all time, and, for all I know, whether you dry your grounds or just boil the breakfast coffee up the second time. Naturally the studio representative will be pleased if you come through with an unqualified endorsement of the film. It’s to be an honest census, however, and if when he asks you how you happened to select this picture you say vaguely that you can’t imagine, you really started out for the Vaccination Clinic in the Public Health Department, he will scrupulously enter your attitude as Indifferent. When all the answers are in, the collected commentary will be taken back to headquarters and there it will probably be run through a sorting machine, tabulated and broken down into statistical form, and the studio will know fresh from the source whether or not the public approves of its product —information it could have got quite handily from the boxoffice without hiring extra help. The public no doubt will take to it kindly because we always like to be asked our opinion even when we suspect that we have peen shrewdly classified in advance as Sample Matron, Age Forty Group, Lower Income Bracket. But it’s still hard to see what direct benefit the experiment will bring either to the studio or the production, since post mortem findings, while interesting in themselves, aren’t much use to the subject under analysis. I suppose it’s just that we all have the questionnaire habit by this time, having come to feel that the right to ask and answer questions, however irrelevant, is somehow obsecurely related to our democracy. If not democracy, it is at least part of our way of living that a Crossley Rating investigator can call you out of a hot bath to ask you what program you've just Canadian FILM WEEKLY ¢ been listening to; or that you can Se ee Page 7 é look an enquiring lobby analyst right in the eye and tell him that his picture is lousy, just perfectly lousy. OF CANADA LTD. 277 Victoria St. PM, NEW YORK Toronto (A number of children were asked “What is the best motion picture you ever saw?” The reply of Peter Scheiner, 7, is printed below.) {fete Sunday I saw “A Yank at Eton” and “Calling Dr. Gillespie.” I like the doctor picture better because there was more murder. No one got murdered, but I mean there was more excitement—sort of like there was going to be murder. But then someone came in and saved them. “Yank at Eton’’ was with Mickey Rooney. Mickey gets mad and has a fight, and of course he wins. Most times he wins. What picture would I like to see? “Sergeant York”’—only I saw it. It wasn’t so good as I thought. There was one part without shooting. I like more murder in pictures. I like to see people get murdered. I’d like to murder somebody — but only in the movies ’cause they don’t die at all when you murder them in the movies. It’s just fun. Besides murder I like shooting, war and cowboy pictures. A cowboy is a man who rides around on a horse. Once I rode on a horse. I like horses but I’d rather be a lawyer like my father. Wise exhibitors From Coast to coast Are showing MONOGRAM PICTURES And reaping Profits You too Can have a Banner Year By showing MONOGRAM PICTURES LIEUT. M. THWAITES, R.N. (Winner of the King’s Medal for poetry in 1939) N° drum they wished, whose thoughts were tied To girls and jobs and mother, Who rose and drilled and killed and died. Because they saw no other, Who died without the hero’s throb And if they trembled, hid it, Who did not fancy much their job But thought it best, and did it. Current Releases ONE THRILLING NIGHT John Beal, Wanda McKay ISLE OF MISSING MEN John Howard, Roland Gilbert, Alan Mowbray BOWERY AT MIDNIGHT Bela Lugosi BENEATH BROOKLYN BRIDGE East Side Kids RHYTHM PARADE Gale Storm, Mills Bros., NTG Revue WAR DOGS Billy Lee, Addison Richards LURE OF THE ISLANDS Margie Hart Washington Cuts Raw Stock Further Hollywood’s use of movie film was trimmed another seven per cent last week by the War Production Board. The boards ordered an average cut of 25 per cent under the amount of movie film used by major producers and distributors in 1941, and told smaller companies to cut their film consumption an average of 12 per cent,