Motion Picture (Aug 1940-Jan 1941)

When you see The Howards of Virginia you will witness a picture that has Williamsburg, Virginia, as its background — Williamsburg as it is today, a reproduction of Colonial days, with Cary Grant and Martha Scott. The scene is in front of Capitol T> UST-OUT-LAFFIN'EST off-the-script crack of ■^* the month came on Republic's Wagons Westward . . . It was the scene where Chester Morris, as the outlaw Tom Cook, has the squabble with his dancehall sweetie — the sweetie being played by Anita Louise. The bandit is accusing his gal of twotiming him — of having played him false. But the gal pleads that she's just a one-man honey . . . "Tom," cries Anita Louise, "I've been true to you. I've never, never loved another man . . . !" Without hatting an eyelash, Chester Morris departs from the script, and snarls— "Yeah? — H OW ABOUT BUDDY ADLLR 1 1 1" And it's fully five minutes before there's any semblance of sanity on the set, for even Director Lew Landers is in stitches and can't call order . . . Thru it all, the camera has been going — and they say that Anita has gotten the strip of film, along with the sound track of course, to give to Adler as a wedding present . . . Strangest production-stopping accident on the month's records comes from Tucson, Arizona, where Columbia's been shooting Arizona ... It happens to Jean Arthur . . . Riding into the scene, Jean's horse gallops too close to a clump of cactus . . . There's a scream from Jean as a sharp spine of the cactus pierces her leather riding-boot, drives deep into the calf of her leg ... In ten seconds, the leg is so swollen that they have to cut the boot away — and they shoot around Jean for several days, until she can walk and ride again . . . And now she steers her hoss far, far, from cactus . . . The desert-wise on the set inform her that the cactus is the variety called sahuero — semi-poisonous. Ty EMEMBER those queer contraptions Rube Gold"*•*■ berg used to devise, in his cartoons? — those sequential devices where A leads to B which leads to C and so on and on and on . . . Well, here's what happened, in the best Goldberg fashion, on the Girl in SIS set at Twentieth-Fox: . . . Kent Taylor was backing an automobile ... It got away from him and knocked over one of those big side-line lamps . . . The lamp fell over, hitting a stepladder . . . On the stepladder was electrician Bill Nugent . . . Nugent fell off the ladder . . . He landed on a canvas chair — one of the line-up on the sidelines in which the actors sit between takes ... It was Kent Taylor's chair . . . In it was Kent Taylor's brand new high silk hat, which he was to wear in the next scene . . . When Bill Nugent fell on the hat, it was too bad for the hat . . . It was also too bad for production — because they couldn't shoot the scene until they'd sent all the way downtown for another hat, because the wardrobe department didn't have a spare one to fit Taylor . . . ! Not one to take chances with his preshy-weshy li'l handsiewansies is Gene Raymond . . . Those hands are too, too valuable and important to Gene — even more so, if this be possible, than his trade-mark hair of platinum . . . You see, Gene considers his musical career even more important to him than his acting career, and when it comes to any conflict between the two, Gene will protect his musical future above his thespianic prospects . So when it came to the scene in Cross Country Romance, where the script called for Gene to catch a bus by running after it as it moved away, and leaping on the running-board to catch the hand-grips with his hands, he put his foot down with a loud and granite "NO!" . . . "Why not?" asked Director Frank Woodruff; "It's simple . . ." "It may be simple," countered Gene, "but don't forget that I've spent the past fourteen months developing my piano technique, and I've been working eight hours a day to develop my hands and fingers — and I'm not going to damage any of them by grabbing rolling autobusses . . ." "But the story calls for it," snapped Woodruff . . . "Okay," said Gene; "let's compromise. Don't forget that I'm quite an athlete, too, as well as an actor and a musican . . ." "So what," asked the director . . . "So this," said Gene, and demonstrated — He ordered the bus to start rolling. Then, as the script directed, he sprinted after it — in the best Gene Raymond hundred-yarddash form . . . But — when it came time to leap and grab the handstraps with his million-dollar fingiewingies. Gene changed the action . . . He leaped all right — but he never touched his hands to the moving vehicle . . . Instead, with the precision and balance which only a well-trained athlete can demonstrate, Raymond leaped onto the runningboard and into the door of the bus — without touching ANYthing with his hands (except his hair, to smooth its platinum wave back into placidity). . . . Gee, ma, ain't these movie actors wunnaf ul ? QlLLIEST production delay of the month — came ^ on the set of Tom Brown's School Days. Between takes, Billy Halop (who loses all his Dead End toughness in this picture) was hungry . . . He scouted around to find what he could find — and in a kit lying on a table on the sidelines, he found a lot of chocolate ... So he ate it . . . Then he prepared for a fight scene between, him and young Jimmy Lydon ... In the fight, Halop gets a cut cheek and bloody nose . . . The make-up man hurried up to paint the wounds on — and then began screaming: "Somebody stole my make-up! Who's been at my make-up kit?" "Well, I ate the chocolate in it, but I didn't take any of your other stuff," explained Halop . . . "Why, you darn fool," screamed the make-up man; "that chocolate WAS my make-up!" Chocolate, he painstakingly but furiously explained to young Mister Halop, is what Hollywood makes blood out of, for the cameras . . . And so they had to delay shooting until they sent to the studio commissary for more candy, and"^ melted it down to bloody up Billy's puss. ^m^^^... the loveliest thing in make-up Lipstick, new, exciting, as alluringly feminine as its name — in new shades that lend soft warmth to your lips — reeudips that beckon men — lips that whisper of love. Scented with a costlier perfume men can't resist, Chiffon Lipstick is superlatively smooth in texture. 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