Photoplay (Jul-Dec 1938)

Sure the Irish stick together, but this tells you what Spence Tracy really thinks "of Mickey Rooney's acting in "Boys' Town" Allan Dwan takes a hand in history with Loretta Young, Annabella and Tyrone Power in "Suez" WE COVER THE History — past, present one/ future events — that's what we learn this month in our Cook's tour of the lots BY JACK WADE B ETTER get out your history books, if you want to be up on the new Hollywood movies. Past, current, and even coming events are casting their shadows before them — on the screen. That's the timely lesson we learn on this month's Cook's tour of the studios. Truth is stranger than fiction — but even stranger than that is the way truth and history are ganging up on Hollywood today. Directly and indirectly, stars, studios and stories are under the influence of real facts and real figures. The sets are dotted with them or their counterparts— Johann Strauss, Viscount de Lesseps, Disraeli, Louis Napoleon, Louis XI, Paul Redfern, Father Flanagan, Frangois Villon, Amelia Earhart, Metternich, Empress Eugenie — even those dashing modern figures, Prince Mike Romanoff and Peggy Hopkins Joyce! Everywhere we turn something real inspires something romantic. Why, even Mussolini's Ethiopian adventure has handed Clark Gable a new thrill-packed adventure role! "Too Hot to Handle," our first set invasion at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, really has nothing to do with II Duce or his Fascisti friends. It's an adventurous saga of a daredevil newsreel cameraman. But if Laurence Stallings, the war correspondent, and Leonard Hammond, the ace newsreeler, hadn't sat idly for weeks sopping up the Ethiopian rainfall and waiting for Mussolini to get going, Clark might very well have missed out on a dashing scenario to follow in the wake of "Test Pilot." As it was, Stallings and John Lee Mahin cooked up a yarn based on Hammond's adventures behind a tripod — and, bingo, Clark has just what he needs for his new adventure -personality peg on the screen! The way "Too Hot to Handle" finally worked out makes Clark a lone-wolf picture-shooting ace and Myrna Loy an Earhart-ish ocean flyer. Walter Pidgeon, Leo Carrillo and Walter Connolly mix up in the excitement which hops from here to Manilla to Shanghai to the South American jungles and back again. Along the way, Clark films everything spectacular in sight at the risk of life and limb, you can be sure, rescues Myrna's jungle-lost aviation brother (Paul Redfern idea) and manages some very personal close-ups with Myrna to the disgust of rival Walter Pidgeon. Now, don't get worried — Clark gets her in the end. When we intrude on these doings on Stage 29, Clark has just passed from burning lips to burning ships. The film he has taken of a flaming liner makes Walter covet half the profits, so there's quite a long and scrappy scene. Aviation pictures always seem to require a setful of fake oil-spray fog. We could do without that, because, in this case, it partially hides lovely Myrna Loy. "Minnie," pert and sassy in a flying suit and goggles, climbs down out of her plane to put her two-cents worth in the argument. "Action!" says Director Conway. "No — wait a minute. Clark, you're too neat." Clark looks slightly bewildered as a couple of prop men leap to his side, muss his hair and squirt grease all over a snappy sport coat. Then he grins wickedly. "You boys all through?" "Yep," replied the grease-squirters. "What's the joke?" "Nothing," says Clark, "except M-G-M just spent one hundred and ten bucks. That's what this jacket cost me. It's mine — not the studio's!" The prop men stagger. We watch the scene, but somebody — maybe us — is a jinx. Clark repeatedly blows his lines like an amateur. What's the matter? The assistant director tells us. Clark is overanxious because he's been invited by Donald Douglas, the plane-builder, to be a guest at the take-off of the DC-4, the mammoth plane that's being launched this afternoon. Director Conway has promised to get him through in time, but now it looks like they'll never make it. And is Clark worried! He likes planes. Then, as we watch, we see something that has never before met our eyes on a Hollywood set. 54