Motion Picture Herald (Apr-Jun 1933)

April 15. 193 3 MOTION PICTURE HERALD 21 A$IDE§ & INTEI^LLDES APROPOS of the rebirth last week of legitimate brew, Terry Donoghue tells about the days when Broadway was really a gay white way — when there were no speakeasies with barred doors, no raucous night clubs. Jack's, Churchill's, Murray's, the old Metropole occupied sites from which they long since have vanished. Nor were there any street hawkers or uniformed "generals" in front of Broadway's picture houses. Terry remembers well how the newspaper boys, the writing and drinking crowd, gathered in old Jack's place. They were Jack's favored blackguards. He had a special room for them — called it the Psychopathic Ward. Here they exchanged biting banter and released themselves from the taut realities by thinking up nonsensical schemes. Our own Ben DeCasseres was one of the chief schemers. He used to balance four filled steins on his well-rounded, intellectual head. Terry says that when others tried it, glass showered the place and Jack blamed Ben for the disturbance. Music was not permitted in Jack's place, but Hype Igoe played the "uke" in the dawn hours when Jack was asleep. For 16 years, Hype kept the instrument hidden from Jack in the icebox. Jack was always busy telling the boys to behave. One night, Ben DeCasseres and the late Frank Ward O'Malley were loudly discussing something. Jack got sore and ordered them out. "Very well, if you feel that way about it," they said with profound and new-found dignity, "we'll leave." And without another word they picked up their table and chairs and established themselves on the sidewalk outside. Jack ran after them. "Please, boys, come back," he pleaded, "you'll disgrace me." The late Wilson Mizner, who died suddenly in Hollywood last week, was another barb in Jack's side. Jack had a habit of shaking his head nervously from side to side. Wilson told strangers that Jack got that way from saying "NO 1" to widows and orphans. Old Broadway. V Elias E. Sugarman, able editor of Billboard — which is the rendezvous for troupers and hawkers — sees the end of constant haggling between circuits and unions. "Out of labor pains," he writes, "are great movements born." And Mr. Sugarman a bachelor. V Fox will not reveal the name of the director of "Hello, Sister." The press-book lists the entire production stafT and cast, but no director. Charlie McCarthy's home office publicity department said: "We're not giving credit to any one for directing 'Sister.' " Early last winter, Erich von Stroheim undertook the making of a Fox production titled "Walking Down Broadway." The results were developed, screened privately, shelved in the farthest corner of the Fox vaults. This week the picture is making its debut as "Hello, Sister" — no director. Jack Pearl says he has a brother-in-law who was a sea captain, but was promoted to sea lawyer — taking cases off ships. V Trick-waiter Frank Libuse, Chicago-born, made his fortune out of anno3nng people. One night, Charlie Chaplin arrived at the Hollywood cafe where Libuse was appearing. With the dignified bearing of a headwaiter, the professional pest lead the Chaplin party in a zigzag course around the table, to and fro across the dance floor and directly through the kitchen door. Don Plant writes about it in the current Chieagoan. By JAMES CUNNINGHAM ROYALTY AND THE SHERIFF Jack Williams writes from Salt Lake about an exhibitor who, upon learning that his bank was about to foreclose, assigned ownership of the theatre to King George, Benito Mussolini and Mahatma Ghandi — and under the law, the bank has to sue the assignees. ACTIVITIES current in the House of Representatives pertaining to a measure calling for investigation of the motion picture business, automatically raises Representative William Isaac Sirovich to the post of Chief Congressional Annoyer of Films, a job held during the last session by Senator Smith Wildman Brookhart, who reluctantly returned to the tall com fields of his native Iowa when his constituents refused him re-election. Industry representatives are reported to have dismissed Sirovich's bill with the observation, "A last resort measure for disposing of some old plays and scenarios authored by the New York Congressman." Mr. Sirovich is quite versatile. Besides being Democratic Congressman from New York's tenement district at Sixth Street and the East River, Sirovich writes a daily column, "The Truth About Foods," for New York's gabby tabloid, the Daily Mirror. He is a doctor of medicine, a lecturer, an authority on hospitalization, the son of a rabbi, an advisor on widows' pensions and child welfare, official arbitrator in labor disputes, a journalist and a playwright. His latest Broadway production— branded by the critics as a piece of tripe — had a short life and a miserable death. This made Sirovich so sore that the newspaper critics who wrote "rotten" notices about it were charged by the Congressman with having effected a conspiracy against his show. We have in hand a recent copy of the Daily Mirror. On page 13, Representative Sirovich reports at length on fish. y When Pete Harrison sees Educational' s "Across America in Ten Minutes," he'll probably complain to E. W. Hammons because it runs only nine minutes. V Many and diverse are the manifestations of the movement and thought which the motion picture expresses as "decentralization." Dr. Horace M. Kallen, philosopher and psychologist, of the New School of Social Research, has just come forth with a book entitled "Individualism— An American Way of Life," published by Liveright. He makes clear an ideal of everyman's world for himself, but supplies no certain method for its achievement. It's a general problem. Meanwhile we are reminded that Dr. Kallen was among the first serious students of the motion picture. While a student he wrote for the Harvard Magazine the first academic discussion of the screen ever published. Young Mr. Kallen's essay, variously expanded and elaborated, was the backbone of Dr. Hugo Munsterberg's "The Photoplay," published a few years later, the first volume of critical consideration of the screen. V Eddie Cantor says that Joe E. Brown was not born with a silver spoon in his mouth--4t ims a soup ladle. . V And in the agricultural belt, it's "Farewell to Farms." j EONARD HALL, of the RKO staff, calls L. Radio City "The City of Magnificent Distances." During his four months as a publicity "tom-tom bearer" for the Music Hall, Leonard says he has walked a total of 114,210 miles. Two years of trudging during the War left him with perfect feet — corn-doctors used to come from miles around to marvel at them. Four months at Mr. Aylesworth's Music Hall have given him fallen arches, severe callouses, sporadic attacks of string-halt and a bad spavin. From his office to that of production director Leon Leonidoff, is four and three-fifths miles, says Hall, with 36 separate and distinct turnings, "most of them wrong." From Leonidoff's lair to the basement cafeteria is another five and a half miles. "By this time," he reports, "it is nearly evening, and my boss is sending out searching parties with lanterns. At sunset, travel-stained and weary, I reach my cubicle on the seventh floor, having learned the names of the adagio dancers who will appear next week with the Roxyettes." Roxy may not be at Hot Springs after all. If he doesn't show up in another week, Harold Franklin should send out a searching party through the labyrinth backstage in "The City of Magnificent Distances." V The motion picture industry has been talking for years about a "united front." Its members might take a lesson from an incident the other day in one of the big munitions firms in England. Purchasing agents for China and Japan met accidentally in the reception room and fell to talking as friends, finally comparing the prices they were paying for bullets for their war in the Far East. The result was that they went in to see the munitions maker together, put up a united front and went away with a 40 per cent cut in prices. V One of Ed Wynn's eccentricities is the maintenance of an old pair of shoes which he still wears. Bought 26 years ago in Pittsburgh for $3.50, Wynn has spent $1,400 repairing them since, at the rate of about $1 a week. V Kelcey Allen wonders what Hitler will say when he hears that Julius Cohen, picture critic, has joined Staats-Zeitung und Herold, German language newspaper published in New York. V Dick Sears, Pathe's alert newsreel representative in New England, has in hand a Bostonian with a rather unusual appetite, who would willingly appear as a newsreel subject while devouring one quart of soup, four pounds of roast beef, or an eight-pound turkey; one bowl of squash, two quarts of cranberry sauce, two quarts of mashed potatoes, one mince pie, one squash pie, four cups of coffee, one quart of milk, one pint of heavy cream, one loaf of bread, two quarts of boiled onions, one pound of butter, two bottles of beer (3.2), two pounds of mixed nuts, one pound of grapes, one quart of ice cream, one quart of strawberries, one pound of chocolate and six good cigars. Mr. Sears is delaying production until the time when such a meal may be financed. V Max Winslow is one of the newest Columbia production executives, stepping directly from the music publishing business in New York to a studio post at HoU}rwood. Harry Cohn, president, who concluded the deal last week while in the East, explained this unusual transformation thusly: "Eighty per cent of those in the film business are full of hot air and Winslow can't hurt it anyway." V Sign on the front of a New Orleans neighborhood theatre: "PROSPERITY IS JUST AROUND THE CORNER." At the corner is a bank which has frozen 95 per cent of its assets, paying 5 per cent.