Motion Picture Herald (Sep-Oct 1939)

October 28, 1939 MOTION PICTURE HERALD 37 ASIDES and INTERLUDES By JAMES P. CUNNINGHAM There was the mud-packed tomb of the African chief inside the sacred burial house of Kondola, a native village deep in Central Africa. Beside the tomb stood the limb of a tree, exactly the dead chief's height, covered with tribal fetishes. But the walls were covered with Coca Cola ads, photos of Clark Gable and pictures from virtually every popular American magazine except the National Geographic. And the fetish pole rested in a rusty American tomato soup can, which the natives explained, kept the chief's spirit uncontaminated. This demonstrates the "crazy impact of civilization on Africa," according to Ray Garner and Virginia Garner, 26 and 24, respectively, blond young couple from Brooklyn, who, for a honeymoon, spent 16 months taking 10 motion pictures and 3,500 still shots of the Belgian Congo and the French Cameroon, as described in Motion Picture Herald, three weeks ago. V New York's Roxy, at 50th and Seventh, in New York, and the Rockefeller's Music Hall up the street, may be competitors for the dimes and dollars of the town's native and visiting moviegoers, but when it comes to corraling the giimchewers, the Roxy wins in a walkaway. Any morning between five and seven, with the rising sun, the Roxy management lets loose a full dozen staff porters with sharpened putty knives, pails and a strong de-gummer to pry loose the wads let loose along the long expanse of Roxy sidewalk. Up the street, on the Music Hall's sidewalk, a scant two or three de-gummers may be seen engaged in the same de-gumming. But, then, maybe Mr. Van Schmus had better look on the bottoms of his plushy plush seats. V That little lion cub which Metro-GoldwynMayer christened Leo the Lion, Junior, at New York's World's Fair, during the summer, to serve the same trade mark capacity in which Leo the Lion, Senior, represents the Metro feature product, has, according to its new Metro foster-parents, the earmarks of a Gable, the natural exuberance of Mickey Rooney, the savoir faire of Robert Benchley "and has more fuzz on his chest than Robert Taylor." V Howard Brown, of Color Development Company, Chicago, claims that his company's new process uses sheep's blood as the basic factor in its colorations. V Paging motion picture nezvsreel editors, on the advice of an advertisement in the Providence, Rhode Island, Journal : LADY WHO BROKE UP BEAUTIFUL HOME will sell furniture, rugs, linens and bric-a-brac at sacrifice. V Also for this one, from the Walla Walla, Washington Union : deserted his wife April 16, 1925. He is very pleasant-appearing and usually smiling. V Heads of foreign film departments in New York who are trying with such handicaps to keep straight on their daily-changing European markets, might consider wall maps with rubber borders. It's a long jump from dynamos and motors to Mickey Mouse oatmeal plates for young Buster and Mickey Mouse milk cups for the babe in bib, but Westinghouse Electric has made the grade with one swoop — but made it unconsciously. Most on the outside are aware that Westinghouse, today, as it has for years, stands among the leaders in the manufacture of electrical products and electrical gadgets; but few know that the same company also is one of the leading makers of tableware, toys, smokers' articles and smokers fittings, spoons, plates, tumblers and kitchenware and hundreds of such things, many with pictures glorifying Walter Disney's Mickey Mouse, Mickey's gang, Walt's Snow White, soon Walt's Pinocchio. It came about this way: When the possibilities of plastics were first startling industry, Westinghouse took over a plastics plant near its Bridgeport, Conn., electrical equipment plant, to mould various plastic devices to house its electrical outlets, switches, plugs, fuses and other connections in wiring systems. The capacity of this plant was greater than their needs, so they either had to cut it down or find new uses for plastics — and they found new uses, in the vivid, rainbow colors now used in their dish-and-ash tray sideline. Licenses were obtained from Disney and other cartoon creators to use their characters. And that's how Mickey Mouse joined the Westinghouse family. Since Washington effected that wholesale slash in WPA ranks, some months ago, there has been wonderment about what the WPA Federal Writers' Project might do about that bibliography of the motion picture which it has had in compilation for so long. Practically no word has come out of the Project on the subject for months. However, all seems not lost, the Project is not gone, for word of "new life" came only this week from Project headquarters down on King Street in New York that Project researchers on a writing project of one kind or another had uncovered a bill itemizing the cost of hanging and burying a criminal in New York back in 1752. The executioner got five pounds, eight shillings for hanging one Charles Beekman, Negro; a horse and cart to cart him cost 12 shillings, a rope to hang him, five shillings, three shillings went to "horse hyer," and two shillings, nine pence for "liquor for hangman." Actual burial cost six shillings — less than two dollars. V Be-Kind-to-Animals Department, from a publicity statement to the press issued in behalf of David O. Selznick Productions : Screen writers with unrestrained Imaginations were put in the doghouse today by one of Hollywood's leading dog trainers. Indignantly denouncing writers who expect dogs to perform acts of super-human intelligence, Frank Weatherwax, who has built up one of the screen's finest trained dog kennels, exploded verbally: "The worst obstacle to a movie dog's career is the screen writer. Once a dog makes a reputation In pictures, these writers sit around In story conferences allowing their imaginations to run riot." Stories of the eccentricities of the "Mad Marxes" are frequent and funny. Motion Picture Daily's Al Finestone submits his favorite, from his favorite Kansas City Jewish Chronicle, from his favorite Kansas City : Eddie Buzzell had finished his job — and he'll admit it was some job, directing "Marx Brothers at the Circus" (released last week, MGM, free advt.). In appreciation, Groucho, Harpo and Chico, who appear in the picture, gave Eddie a dinner, with the aid of Zeppo and Gummo, who do not appear in the picture. The big-feed started at Hollywood's Trocadero. Groucho told the waiter the place was too dark. The waiter asked him why he didn't strike a match. That started a "quarrel," and they all left in a seeming huff. They went in search of a "swell cafe" Harpo knew about. Harpo couldn't find it. However, he found a man at a street-curb with a hot-dog wagon. Harpo produced bridge tables and chairs and set them up on the sidewalk. The hot-dog man served chicken soup. Eddie Buzzell in the meantime was feeling a bit of nervous indigestion. Harpo then maneuvered Eddie and the rest of the Mad Marxes to a Hungarian restaurant but another "fight," prearranged, started after the entree so Chico suggested they go see a wrestling match. The American Legion Stadium was locked, but they broke in and found two wrestlers and a referee in the ring. They were served ice cream and cake in the ring with the contestants still going strong. Coffee was later served in a "mortuary." V Tri-State Circuit's new Ingersoll theatre in Des Moines opened the other afternoon with large signs proclaiming: "Staggered seats for Vision, Love seats for Comfort." V Ben Achsiger attended an auto drawing at the Clover theatre in Fort Morgan, Cal., and won the auto on a ticket owned by his girl friend, Esther Mills. Since the dravtnng was by number and not by name a question of equity arose, and the tivo decided they needed legal aid. So they routed a judge out of bed and persuaded him to grant them a permit to purchase a marriage license so that in marriage they may share the car. V Ernst Lubitsch, of the Hollywood directorial Lubitsches, wants so much to be a good dancer, he confided to Michel Mok, of the New York Post, for publication therein. But always he's behind the times, he moaned. "When I learn the two-step, they do the Charleston. I learn the Charleston and they do the Black Bottom. Now I have learned the rhumba and already they are dancing the conga." V Unintentional, intentional or otherwise, the United States Government, in organizing the machinery for the census of business which its Census Bureau will start on January 1st, has placed the motion picture business in the same group as launderers, dirty linen and cleaners. V "There is no doubt about the e.viiberance of the American youth," writes E. H. Mayer, from Ohio, "but it remained for a Cincinnati suburban theatre to advertise the fact, its marquee sign reading: "The Son Never Sets."