Modern Screen (Dec 1938 - Nov 1939 (assorted issues))

MODERN SCREEN SO HELP ME— NOT A SINGLE FLEA J It was "Old Home Week" for fleas on my hide till the Master got wise. "Say." he says, "do you know fleas can cause serious troubles?" ''You should tell me," I says under my breath. HOW LEW GOT THAT WAY Well, he brings on a new powder — Sergeant's Improved SKIP-FLEA. We have a powdering session. "That'll get "em," he mutters. And he's right this SKIP-FLEA really kills — and soothes old itches too! There's nothing like it except the SKIP-FLEA SOAP that works the same way. Take a tip from me — look up SKIP-FLEA at a drug or pet store — and ask for the free new Sergeant's DOG BOOK, or write Sergeant's, Dept. GR-8, Richmond, Va. Serqeat\¥s DOG MEDICINES OATMEAL CLEANSER r^^l lid DC DrMftlfr skincleansingmethod! ntLrO IftmUwL Lavena is pure OatDl APUUrAnC meal Powder specially O Ln VlVn UHLFO refined and processed for regular daily cleansing in place of soap or creams. Get Lavena today at leading 10c stores. For free information write Lavena Corporation, Dept. 103, 141 W. Jackson, Chicago. TALCUM Q)eLiqklfullu feather-textured. Appealingly perfumed in choice of GARDENIA, SWEET PEA, ROSE or ORCHID OF INDIES At all 10c counters, or >M^\* send 10c f°r ru" size III package (post-free). B^JF (Price in Canada 15c). TALCUM PUFF CO. NEW YORK.N.Y. 9. REG. U.S.* PAT. OFF. TALCUM POWDER {Continued from page 47) down to see Mack," Lehr says, "and finally convinced him I had lots of experience and he gave me the job." The job was a comedy role. Lew became Simple Simon. He played it without dialect, for Mack, the star of the show, as Mother Goose herself, used the only dialect in the act. One other performer in the show also merits special mention. This was Anne Leonhardt, who was Bo-Peep. Lew, then eighteen, couldn't take his eyes off her for four whole years. Then the war separated them, for he enlisted in the 74th Railroad Artillery in June, 1917. NINE days after enlistment, they made me a Sergeant," Lew says, modestly adding, "I suppose it was because I was the only guy who wasn't scared to holler good and loud." A couple of weeks later, they wanted to make him a lieutenant of infantry, but he wouldn't change. At all events, after twenty-two strenuous months, Lew was discharged; four days later he and two of his buddies, with whom he had put on shows at the front, had a _ vaudeville booking that kept them busy in New York for six months. Meanwhile he had met Anne again, and on October 9, 1920, they were married. A few months later a new act, "Lehr & Belle," was born. They worked in vaudeville, radio and musical comedy, with occasional time out for flyers in the real estate business, until 1930, when Lew quit to write special material for such stars as Vivienne Segal, Bea Lillie, Bert Lahr and Georgie Price. Then came the break for which Uncle Charlie had unwittingly prepared him so many years before. He met Johnny Walker, who was looking for a man to write and handle comment for a series of old films, to be called "Looking Back." Lew and Johnny teamed up. The result was those two great comedy series "Do You Remember" and "Great Hokum Mystery-" Frank Kirby, the original Thomas Edison cameraman, had an option on 1100 reels of the great inventor's early dramas, and when Truman H. Talley, of Fox Movietone News, saw a musical show in which Don Barclay talked back to an old Chaplin film, Talley got an idea. He went to George Lane and spoke to him about a series of shorts, using a similar idea. Lane said, "I've got it!" and showed Talley "The Great Train Robbery" and "Where Is My Wandering Boy?" which used that principle. Talley was enthusiastic. He wanted to meet the man who had made the sound. So_ they introduced him to Lew Lehr. Soon Kirby's films and Lehr's comedy were featured by Talley's Movietone News. Remember "Adventures of a Newsreel Cameraman" and the "Tintype" series? They were big successes. In a little while Lew was doing serious business. He was editing short subjects, such as "Magic Carpets" and others for Movietone. Then Talley, a veteran newspaper man, got another bright idea. Newspapers had their comic sections. Why shouldn't newsreels do the same? Unable to think of an answer to that one, he started Newsettes — a minute of comedy out of the ten minutes a newsreel runs. Lehr got the assignment. Lew played the first ones in straight voice. He had never used dialect throughout his long theatrical career. But one day along came a shot of a motormen's school in Berlin, with a luxuriantly mous tachioed fellow standing up at a trolley car control board nailed to a wall. It struck Lew as being so ridiculous that he couldn't help putting on the nearest possible approach to a German comedy dialect to kid it. The dialect was a combination of what he subconsciously remembered of Mack's impersonations, some lingo he heard from a Pennsylvania Dutchman on whose farm he stayed one sum • mer, and a few ideas of his own. He gave it a try and audiences liked it. So, with but a few exceptions, he's stuck to dialect ever since. He has more than a dozen different dialects on tap. None too many when you realize he must make 104 pictures every year, and that he's been doing it for some seven years. But voices aren't as big a problem as costumes. He haunts the costumers' shops in a desperate effort to find something new. Now he's driven to combining old costumes and props. A straw hat with a fur coat. Spats and a cane with an old-fashioned bathing suit. Things like that are typical. But even harder is preparing and doing the scripts. He has an analysis of each Newsette placed on his desk. The analysis shows just how much time is devoted to each bit of action. For example, it may say, "Man sees dog, three feet. Dog sees man, four feet. Dog bites man, three feet. Man jumps, one foot. Man bites dog, two feet." With his script tailored to fit the action, he goes to a recording room and rehearses as the film is run off. When he has the rehearsal perfect, the rest is a cinch. All he has to do is keep one eye on the script, the other eye on the screen, read his lines, and work the button that signals the sound effects man. Yeah, there's nothing to it! He got his nickname, Dribble-Puss, from a walrus. The walrus on the film was taking mouthfuls of water and spraying it over the bystanders, so Lew said, "Ach, hello dere, Dribble-Puss!" The name has followed Lehr ever since, though the walrus is forgotten. His slogan — "Monkeys iss the kwaziest peeple !" — originated much in the same way — by accident. He just 'said it about some monkeys in a picture, and everybody liked it so well, he adopted it as a sort of trademark. Otherwise, he uses new material for every picture. "You can't keep on repeating the same jokes and gags," he says. "If you do, the audience learns them and pretty soon they can take your place. When they can do that — they don't need you any longer." THAT his system is successful is proven by the size of his audience — 10,000 theatres in the United States — theatres in every English-speaking country in the world, and a nationwide radio network, with Ben Bernie. On the air he sticks to one dialect, which has made a large number of the unenlightened think that's the only one he does. But in the films he uses Greek, Cockney, Chinese, rube or whatever strikes him as most appropriate. Oddly enough, he used the cockney for years before ever having been to England. When he finally got there, the Munich crisis came along and chased him back to the good old U. S. A. so fast he didn't even wait to make a scheduled television broadcast. His average working day is twelve hours. On his spare time he likes to play golf, draw or paint. Though he began his career as a chalk-talk entertainer, drawing cartoons while he hung upside down The superfine quality of Air -Float Talcum compares with brands selling at three or four limes the price. 82