Motion Picture Herald (Mar-Apr 1940)

April 6 , 1940 MOTION PICTURE HERALD 37 ASIDES and INTERLUDES By JAMES P. CUNNINGHAM WHEN SAMUEL GOLDWYN got to Arizona, the other week, to film exterior scenes for his new "Westerner," he found it necessary, as is customary, to build a few shacks to house the unit, also wooden structures to dot the desert scenery and some other odds and ends. With the flair for publicity that marks so many Goldwyn enterprises, word soon came that Arizona's Governor, in tribute to Mr. Goldwyn, had named the temporary outpost "Goldwyn City," the announcement getting all expected newspaper type and pictorial treatment. The press pictures apparently trickled eastward, reaching Fort Dodge, Iowa, from where one enterprising and ambitious gentleman dispatched the following postal request to the Tucson, Arizona, Chamber of Commerce: "I would like to ask about a small town about 38 miles from Tucson. The name is 'Goldwyn'. As I am. a stranger to that part of the country, I would like your view toward establishing there. If it is not too much trouble, I would like you to describe 'Goldwyn', its business establishments, etc." The request stopped the Chamber of Commerce "cold," freezing them so stiff that they could not reply, left the writing in the hands of the Arizona Republic newspaper editor, who wrote to the Iowan as follows : "Goldwyn City rests on the side of a hill. Surrounding its one sunken-roofed building and adjoining corral is the beautiful Arizona desert, sagebrush, cactus, mesquite, palo verdes and all. Through its streets and in its outskirts roam the cattle of Howell Manning, upon whose land rests the famed city that once impersonated Langtry, Tex., for the purpose of making the movie known as 'The Westerner'. Gary Cooper, Doris Danven port and Walter Brennan raised h all around the place, impersonating Judge Roy Bean and tough western people for some three weeks. They were paid for doing it by Samuel Goldwyn, Inc. "Goldwyn officially obtained its name by proclamation of Gov. R. T. Jones of Arizona, who did it as a publicity stunt and to accommodate the movie company. It must have been a pretty good stunt or you wouldn't know of its existence. "Honest, Mister, it's a shack on the desert and a long, tough drive from civilization (Tucson). You'll have to pack your grub and your water in, along with any other little necessities that go with living anywhere. There's no light, heat or water, no grocery store, hotel, barber shop, bar or restaurant— just a deserted building and corral. "Goldwyn has the distinction of being the only c'rfy that close to Tucson that hasn't been full of winter visitors for months. We don't think you would like it." V Significant of the times, no doubt, is this week's list of new books from Doubleday, Doran and Company, to wit: Broken Pledges, Chart for Rough Water, The March of the Barbarians, Siege, Dark Memories. V Colonel Hubert Fauntleroy Julian, the Black Eagle of New York's Negroes, whose career down the years has been as colored as some of the uniforms he has worn, ranging all the way from fighting for Haille Selassie in Ethiopia to press agenting for movies in Harlem, sailed during the week to fight for Finland. Colonel Julian said he offered his services to Finland before the war with Russia ended but that this was the earliest he had been able to get away. V Edward Arnold's real name is Guenther Edward Schneider, from New York's east side. The New York Sun's H. I. Phillips bemoans Walt Disney's becoming "big business through that new $4,000,000 stock flotation, his first public stock issuance. Phillips has always associated Disney with the world of fantasy, believes he will find it hard to associate him with bid and asked quotations, quarterly financial reports, intangible assets, depreciation and all that. "When you see Pluto on the screen again you may be laughing at a corporate asset. It's going to be difficult to decide whether in the next animated cartoon you are watching Donald Duck or Kidder, Peabody & Co. Mickey Mouse has had many things happen to him in his eventful years on the screen, but up to this time he has never been in danger of being split four for one. And poor Pinocchio! May Jiminy Cricket be near to warn him of the dangers of allowing himself to be known as 'Pinocchio 3^s of 1977'." V Mr. W. H. Nevins, III, calls our special attention to the marquis theatre double bill announcement on the Hornell theatre front at Hornell, N. Y. : "FULL CONFESSION" "THANKS FOR LISTENING" V B. D. Breitenstein, conducting the Rialto theatre, Seattle, falling in line with the candy giveaway practice so widely prevalent, decided to treat his patrons to candy. He bought a load of it and on the first day of dispensing, heard vociferous complaints from one Rev. U. G. Murphy of the Clean City League, who went to the local authorities and protested that Mr. Breitenstein was giving away confectionery marked "rum-soaked." V Reaching far and wide in the merchandising of its new product, Paramount Pictures announces a tieup in which magazine advertisements will sell its new "Biscuit Eater" along with Ken-L-Ration dog food. V And now Mr. Herbert J. Yates' Republic Pictures brings to life one of those fellows of the Pancho Villa, Billy the Kid, Jesse James passive type, turning this time to one William Clarke Quantrill, who lived and loved in the Rhett Butler manner and broke hearts as easily and frequently as he broke the law. His story is told in Republic's new "Dark Command." For reasons inexplicable, few outside of Kansas and Missouri know much about this "Black Knight of Kansas," and to make up for that inattention by biographers, Republic's Charles Reed Jones went out and had Kathleen Lamb do quite a piece on the brigand for the edification of exhibitor customers, spreading the story in quite a fashion in the press book he just finished for "Dark Command," a big press book, done in multi-colors with many an eyearresting piece of type and art. Bad Bill Quantrill did not engage in single murder. One of his choice bits was the leading of his gang of "Red Leg" guerillas — so called because of the red leggings they wore — into the town of Lawrence, Kansas, one night, in August, 1863, murdering the 180 persons who got in their way, pillaging and plundering everything in sight, destroying all buildings, save one, a hotel, which Quantrill "sympathetically" spared because he remembered he had once spent a night there without being charged the tariff, but Quantrill shot the hotel's proprietor. THEY gave Anna a funeral the other day. Eight venerable work horses, wearing the funeral plumage of another day, hauled a gun carriage up to the 40th St. entrance of the Metropolitan Opera House on Broadway, in New York. A man who said he was Jim Moran and called himself the "world's leading purveyor of useless information" tried to read an oration beginning, "We are here to bury Anna, not to praise her," but the crowd made too much noise and he gave up. (Copies of the oration were made available, thoughtfully, for the press.) Another man named Pat Baron of the Somerset Stables said he didn't care much about the funeral as long as he got paid for the use of the eight horses. The plumes and the gun carriage drew a crowd the police had trouble controlling. Few in the crowd knew that Anna was a mare and had made many a Metropolitan Opera entrance in the triumphal scene of "Aida," hauling the chariot that bore the Carusos and Giglis and other tenor greats of her time. Or that she had carried Rudolph Valentino in "The Sheik," and Marion Davies in "When Knighthood Was in Flower." The eight old horses reared and bucked and caused trouble. At last they pulled the gun carriage away from the entrance, supposedly starting the ashes of Anna for her last resting place at the Pegasus Club, in Rockleigh, N. J., to which Anna was retired three years ago. Except that Anna's ashes were never in her funeral anyway. Somebody forgot them and thev were in New Jersev all the time. V The big one of the Allied Relief Ball, coming up May 10th, at New York's Hotel Astor, is Mrs. Howard Dietz, wife of the LoewMetro generalissimo of advertising and publicity. The big problem of Madame Chairman Dietz is to make the ball a masked ball. A local ordinance prohibits public masked balls because crooks can operate undetected midst "rich pickings." Mrs. Dietz is out to have the ban lifted for the one night. V George Bernard Shaw, who by virtue of his writing of "Pygmalion," "Doctor's Dilemma" and other scripts, is somewhat of a contributor to motion pictures from London, insists that any caricatures drawn of him must show a massive forehead, occupying nine-tenths of the picture. To indicate a tremendous amount of brains. V Motion picture film salesmen and other knights of the road checking the weather forecast the other morning before setting out in automobiles to peddle their wares, found this astounding report in the weather forecast box of the Fort Dodge, Iowa, Messenger : TODAY'S ROAD & WEATHER: Over State: Des Moines — Good; Cloudy; Burlington — Good; Part Cloudy; Ottumwa — O God; Cloudy. V All the waitresses in the neighboring Rockefeller Center News-Center Restaurant are redheads: to go with the restaurant color scheme, which is apple green and dustv pink. V A San Diego, CaL, movie theatre flashes on its screen a slide advising, "Ladies Who Wish to Keep Their Hats On Please Sit Down."