The New Movie Magazine (Jan-Sep 1935)

"No More Shabby, Cracked Shades at My Windows!" .. not when £ove£if CLOPMS/iatfeA evie "How deeply embarrassed I was when I accidentally overheard someone call my home 'the house with the shabby shades' ! But what could I do? I simply couldn't afford to buy all the shades I needed. Luckily I found Clopays, the remarkable fibre window shades that cost only 15c each. Now there are no smarter, neater windows in town than mine. Clopays are simply wonderful. Not only all the popular plain colors, but so many lovely chintz patterns that harmonize with any decorative scheme. What amazing wear, too! Clopays actually outlast shades that cost me 3 or 4 times as much." Clopays offer many features found in no other shades. Patented gummed 15 EACH strip makes attaching to old rollers easy. No tacks or tools. Patented creped texture makes them hang straight — roll straight — wear longer. Being solid fibre instead of filled cloth, Clopays will not crack, pinhole or ravel at the edges. No other shade regardless of price can give you all these features. Clopays are sold at all 5-and-10c stores and most neighborhood stores. Send 3c for color samples to Clopay Corporation, 1356 York St., Cincinnati, Ohio. And — HOW DID I EVER KEEP HOUSE BEFORE i found FABRAY?" New FABRAY Gives You Every Advantage of Oilcloth at 1/j to V2 Lower Cost! And think of finding a revolutionary new kind of material that serves every purpose oilcloth can serve — does it as well or better — yet costs M to y& less! There's real economy. FABRAY — another CLOPAY product — actually outdoes oilcloth. Has an oilcloth surface on a fibre backing. Looks, feels and wears like the best oilcloth but will not crack or peel even when creased because it has a solid fibre backing instead of flimsy cheesecloth. Many lovely new patterns. Comes in 46-inch width for tables, also 12-inch widths for shelves. See FABRAY at leading 5-and-10c stores, or send 10c for a 2J/£-yard roll of 12-inch shelving. State colors preferred. CLOPAY CORPORATION, 1363YorkSt., Cincinnati, Ohio Frankie and Freddie (Frankie Thomas) {Continued from page 27) He said: "Did you see those new jaguars they've got at the zoo? Boy, were they fierce." I hadn't. I regretted it, too. I could see that I should have been equipped with some data on the wild animal situation. He said: "Did you see Frank Buck's last picture? Boy, does he have a swell time. Did you know I'm going to play with a dog in my next picture and I have three weeks after I get to Hollywood to do nothing but get acquainted with him?" I didn't. He looked a trifle downcast, but it was as nothing compared to my feelings at being so tried and found wanting. I had practically no small talk about Frank Buck or lariats or other real boy interests. "Do you think Frank Buck could have a good adventure with sharks?" he demanded hopefully. "Boy, would that make a keen picture!" At this point Big Frank, who is very serious about being a father, which means that he knows just when to be firm and take charge of a situation, said, "Suppose we lay off the shark business, old man, and have a look at the menu." He proposed boiled tongue and spinach and, as I live and breathe, there was no small-boy protest when his father said: "I think you'll like the tongue and the spinach will be good for you." He grinned that engaging grin, which twists up the corners of his wide, flexible mouth and narrows his eyes until they're fine lines of silver shining out from behind rather absurdly long lashes, and said, "Okay, Dad. Let's go for spinach." Nor do I think it was company manners. If a thing is good for him it is good for the job, and he is completely serious about the importance of keeping himself fit. They tell a revealing story about him at the Professional Children's School, that fascinating New York school attended by child actors and singers and dancers, with hours only from eleven until two, so that they can keep afternoon engagements. He came to school one morning with a very black eye and when asked how he acquired it, said: "Well, if you must know, I got it playing football, but I guess I'll have to give it up. There's too much at stake." They chuckle a little, too, those understanding teachers, over the fact that he learned the eighty-two pages of his part in "Wednesday's Child" in four days, and they had to keep him after school to learn two verses of "The Ancient Mariner." "You see, it doesn't make sense, and my part does," he explained, which seemed to me one of the best socks Ye Coleridge had ever received. By the time we had progressed to dessert, which turned out to be a Cream Napoleon with two scoops of ice cream, I knew that his favorite books are "Captain Blood," "The Odyssey of a Shark Hunter," and "Medieval History," because there are lots of fights in them; that he wants to play Kipling's "Kim"; that he is going to write a play with his dad; that his favorite speech is the immortal "To be or not to be"; and I knew that, as a private individual, Master Thomas was all boy and no boredom. Also that the exhilarating quality of vitality which leaps out at you from the screen and stage is in part the result of a thoroughly masculine preoccupation with all feats of physical strength as much as it is inner spirit. "What are you going to be when you grow up?" I asked. Not that there was much doubt in my mind. No broncho busters or bank presidents for him, I was sure — the average wish of the usual child actor. "Oh, an actor, of course. I couldn't be anything else. And there's so much to learn that I'm awfully glad I got an early start." That in all sincerity. All humility. He has all a grown-up actor's ease in covering a situation. There was a play, name forgotten now, in which he was to go off stage, get a chocolate bar, and come back with it half-eaten but face smeared up. He made his exit on schedule and was handed the bar of chocolate by the stage manager. Then, boylike, he ate the whole bar. When his cue came, however, he remembered the business of his entrance. No smear. No laugh. So he rubbed his fingers over his mascaraed eyelashes and from there to his mouth. Unfortunately it almost broke up the group on the stage as well as the audience, for what he had shaped over his five-year-old mouth was a well-defined moustache. A FEW days after our luncheon I went back stage for the last performance of "The First Legion" before Frankie's embarking for Hollywood. I went especially to see his mother, and now that I have talked to her I feel very hopeful about his future. She is a professional, like Frankie's father. Years of stock company work and some on the screen. Her elfin beauty flashed out at you in the recent screen version of "Dancing Mothers." She refers to Big Frank and Little Frank as "the boys." She is maternal without being maudlin. Very conscious of how to help Frankie develop his talent, but also healthfully casual about it all. She does Frankie's make-up and stands in the wings every night until he comes off the stage, whereupon she whisks him home and to bed with a glass of milk. On Saturday nights, as a special favor, he stays up until twelve to read the Sunday funnies. In Hollywood he will have more regular hours for working and sleeping, and a part of each day will be spent on the correspondence course he takes from the Professional Children's School in New York. He will make two pictures each year if the right parts can be found, and spend the rest of the time on the stage in New York, the technique of one type of acting aiding and abetting the other. "Frankie isn't a pretty boy," his mother said, with what was to me a surprisingly impersonal appraisal for a fond parent; but, after all, she is a professional as well as a professional child's mother. "Well, not in the pretty-pretty sense of most stage children," I said, "but what a big break that he isn't, after all ! He is handsome enough for any leading part, but he'll never depend just on his looks. The most important fact about him is that he can act." "Yes, he can act," she said simply. "And he has so much to help him. No stage fright at all. He can't understand grown-ups who shake and shiver on opening nights. An audience is 50 The New Movie Magazine, May, 1935