The New Movie Magazine (Jan-Sep 1935)

On-the-Set Reviews it, the thrills chased up and down our spinal column. Of course, Randy rescues his trembling girl friend and, in giving angry chase, "She" steps into the flames that have given her eternal life up 'til now. But, this time there seems to be a short circuit some place. For an instant, "She" is glorified. Then, before their amazed eyes Miss Gahagan is reduced to a hag-like old woman, who dies at their feet! And then, all the kids have to do is go home and try and make their friends believe they were sober all the time! It took two directors, Irving Pichel and L. C. Holden, to keep track of this one. And we're not surprised at all. You deserve a good ALIBI IKE laugh after that one • and who can dish out WARNERS the giggles any better than Joe E. Brown? Joe is back on the ball diamond again, but this time, instead of thinking he's a combination of the Dean boys and Babe Ruth, Joe never makes a home run nor a swell field catch without apologizing for it ! If he makes a mistake, he has an excuse, and if he makes a triple play all by himself, he swears he could have done better if the short stop hadn't got in the way! Falling in love with the team captain's daughter, Olivia de Haviland, Joe declares that the letters he gets from her are from a college chum. And when Olivia blossoms out with a diamond the size of the Kohinoor, he says he just loaned it to her to fool a friend. Olivia overhears this and, that night, Joe finds his ring and a note informing him that the engagement is off. And right there our hero's batting average drops from .400 to .000. With the World Series just around the corner, the rest of the boys write to Olivia, assuring her that Joe is so bashful that he was afraid to come right out and admit that he asked such a beautiful girl to be his bride! So, what does Olivia do? Well, she does exactly as you and Director Ray Enright want her to do. So, with Olivia in a tender mood, Captain Bill Frawley arranges to give Joe a few days off to go to Boston and do a little scouting. "Have a good time!" the boys call as he starts to leave. But you can't change the leopard's spots. "I ain't lookin' for no good time," says Joe. "I'm just goin' scoutin'." "Aw, c'mon," the boys insist. "You better have a drink on us before you go." "Well . . ." says Joe, "they do claim it helps a cold!" Ray Enright directed this famous Ring Lardner story. This one, taken THE RAVE1V from Edgar Allen • Poe's "The Raven" UNIVERSAL and "Gold-bug," contains a little bit of both and not much of either. There is a raven, all right, but it's no more than a stuffed one and simply hangs innocently on Bela Lugosi's wall as a symbol of ill omen and . . . death! Operating on Irene Ware, Lugosi goes for her in such a big way that he casts a spell on her, hoping to get her for himself. Which doesn't go over at all with Irene's fiance, Lester Matthews. Boris Karloff, a notorious criminal, comes to Lugosi to have his face reconstructed and the surgeon agrees to do the job if Karloff will help him turn a mean trick he has up his sleeve for Irene. Karloff agrees, figuring that he can slip out of the dirty work once his face is fixed. But, when Lugosi removes the bandages, the Karloff "phiz" is "phixed," all right, and so horribly that the poor fellow will do anything Lugosi says in order to have his features restored. Well, to think up so much dirty work, Lugosi should be quintuplets, at least! With Karloff's unwilling assistance, he chases people all over the spooky house, finally coralling Miss Ware and Matthews in a trick room that is controlled by a switch that brings the walls together ! We're going to leave you here, because Karloff and Matthews are having "tiffin" on the other side of the set, and have given us a hearty wig-wag to join them! The left side of Karloff's face is presentable, but, getting around on the other side — so help me, we dropped a perfectly good cup, full of tea, too! Horribly twisted and scarred, the right side looks as though it might be a relief map of North America! An artificial eye has been slipped over Karloff's own right eye and the thing, besides being painful, points off at a crazy angle that gave us the jitters in no time at all! But we drank tea and inquired of Matthews how he liked our country. And here's another British charmer, ladies, that might do things to your blood pressure if I weren't obliged to warn you that he's already married ! He thinks Hollywood is slightly mad, "but," he assures us, "I don't think people are interesting unless they are a little mad, do you?" which pleased us no end, being the way we are! These tea parties are all right and we were just reaching for our third cup (counting the one we dropped) when Director Louis Friedlander called, "On the set!" And that was that until next time. Because we can't BROADWAY hear too much of GONDOLIER Dick Powell's voice, • and because it WARNERS sounds like a swell story, and because it took three good writers (Sig Herzig, Hans Kraly and E. Y. Harburg) three weeks to throw the tale together; and because three's our lucky number, well . . . for reasons of our own, we're putting this one in the Best List! Furthermore, we're crazy about the Mills ' Brothers and Director Lloyd Bacon. So there! Dick, a New York cab driver, is the pupil of Adolphe Menjou, a brokendown old opera singer, whose faith in the lad is only exceeded by his determination to put Dick across. With a couple of drunken opera critics in his cab, Dick turns loose a few arias, and the soaks are so impressed that they give him a letter to one of the better radio stations. However, on the night of his scheduled try-out, a pair of cops hop on the running board and order our wouldbe crooner to "follow that car!", so, there he is, stuck with a mouthful of "bo-bo-bo-boes" and no place to put 'em! Louise Fazenda, owner of a cheese corporation, goes to Europe to unearth {Please turn to page 64) Vr^n &%te$w*$>* The Neiv Movie Magazine, July, 1935 CI