Photoplay (Jul-Dec 1938)

"Cut!" cries the director. "Now what the — ?" "It's my St. Bernard puppy," explains Judy sheepishly. "He's — he's a little big for his age, but he's just a baby and likes to be loved. I had him tied up in my dressing room, but I guess he got loose!" But that's one puppy who's very much in the doghouse — along with Judy Garland. The unforgivable set sin is to spcil a good take. Over at Twentieth Century-Fox, usually just bubbling with brand-new movie making, we run across the lowest production ebb in the history of the studio. Two pictures shooting. For the first time in our experience there's nothing new for us to see at TC-F. Darryl Zanuck, it seems, came back from his European vacation and set all shooting schedules back a week or two so he could personally check up on every picture about to roll. So, on to Hal Roach's to catch Fredric March, Virginia Bruce, Patsy Kelly and Company in "There Goes My Heart." So you thought Hal Roach made just Our Gang kiddie-comedies and Laurel-and-Hardy feature insanities, did you? Don't forget, Roach made "Topper." What's more, he'll make eight big pictures this year, including a sequel, "Topper Takes A Trip." "There Goes My Heart" sticks to the Roach tradition of fun, though. Hal isn't going to stick his neck in the rare air of the heavy "drayma" and get it cracked lustily by the critics. He knows his limitations. WE thought we'd run into the picture, "St. Louis Blues," at Paramount, but they switched leads at the last moment and are holding up production past our bedtime. Shirley Ross was booked for the lead, but Dorothy Lamour was hanging around without anything to do so they slipped her into that spot. We find Shirley on the set of "Thanks For The Memory" with Bob Hope, which makes sense to us. Nobody but Shirley and Bob plugged that song to the top spot in the nation's fancy. The picture's very title suggests a musical, but, when we find Shirley stretched out on a couch reading a book, she assures us with mock hauteur that she's a dramatic actress now. Just one brief chorus of the song, "Thanks For The Memory," worms its way into the final reels of the picture. We finally tear ourselves away for a look at Frances Farmer in her first picture since she shook the dust of Hollywood from her determined tootsies months ago. PHOTOP BY GWENN WALTERS Ediih Head designed this bottle-green and beige herringbone tweed suit for Joan Bennett to wear in Paramount's "Artists and Models Abroad." The green note of the tweed is repeated in the Lyons velvet trim of the long topcoat, the cashmere sweater and suede accessories. The stitched velvet acorn cap is also of green. Too bad you can't see t!:e heavy, long silk-fringed tassel that falls to the shoulder. Joan is now filming "Trade Winds" for her home studio, Walter Wangar NATURAL COLOR PHOTOGRAPH BY HURREIL "Escape From Yesterday," we decide, deserves our more serious attention. The first thing Frances tells us, seated calmly on a wooden toolbox and done up in a classic white gown with her hair in golden braids, is that the newspapers have done her wrong. All those things she is supposed to have said in New York about hating Hollywood and never going back to vulgar Hollywood, screen and stuff, are, Frances swears, a lot of salami. All she said is that New York and the stage were nice places and she likes them. The press drew their own conclusions — that anyone who cared for New York must hate Hollywood! What Frances doesn't tell us about "Escape From Yesterday" is this: it's a rather small, unimportant part for her. But she wanted to do it because the picture's an important break for her husband, Leif Erikson. Yes, they're together in this and Leif has the biggest part. He's the son of Akim Tamiroff, a Russian cossack cattle rustler in Kansas, if you can picture that. Frances is a Russian refugee night-club singer. While Frances and Leif sit on the toolbox and hold hands (they're still cooing), we watch Akim Tamiroff and Lynne Overman (two mighty fine acting gentlemen) run through a tense prison scene. They say about two quiet, sullen lines apiece, then they go at each other like tigers in the narrow bunk cell. Lynne is killed. It's so realistic it makes everybody shudder. But at the "Cut!" Lynne gets up off the floor, winks and inquires calmly, "Is there an undertaker in the house?" Bob Burns and his "Arkansas Traveler" company elude us on location. So we step around the corner to RKO, "The Mad Miss Manton" and Barbara Stanwyck. It's worth all Photoplay's prestige to get on this set. The reason: Barbara is working with her doctor and nurse standing by. A severe attack of laryngitis laid her low and after a week at home in bed the medico said she might make pictures if they'd treat her like a delicate child. The only time Barbara ever tried comedy before, the picture expired like an infirm turkey. But Barbara made up her Irish mind that after "Stella Dallas" and "Always Goodbye" she had had her quota of tears, so she asked for another crack at comedy. "The Mad Miss Manton" is it. No picture could give her more of an aboutface. "The Mad Miss Manton" will be broad, sometimes slapstick. Barbara, instead of bidding for her usual sympathy, will appear as a glamour girl, loaded with a flock of Parisian gowns, $50,000 worth of furs and jewels enough to dress Cartier's window. Instead of from across the tracks, she's a giddy member of the upper crust, a Junior Leaguer and a playgirl! The story makes Henry Fonda a serious minded newspaper reporter quite disgusted with the frivolities and exhibitionism of too-rich society girls. He sets out on a one-man crusade to rip them to pieces in print. But he really doesn't know what he's after, because he's never met a real playgirl — until he runs into Barbara. They meet in the same room with a murdered man — and from then on it's a rollicking murder mystery with cops, killers and mystery men — and love burgeoning through it all. Right now, you'd never know anything ever ailed Barbara. She's whirling around with Hank Fonda on the dance floor of a movie night club, dressed in a shining, black-beaded dress. The orchestra plays gaily. Vicki Lester, Whitney Bourne and Frances Mercer trip beside her with their escorts. One of the escorts, a tall, finelooking chap in white tie and tails, catches our eye. His features seem faintly familiar. We're interested and ask several extras who he is. No one knows. Finally one of them says, "Him? Oh, that's Byron Stevens. He's Barbara's brother." Ruby and Byron Stevens. Brother and sister. In the same family. In the same town. In the same business. On the same set. One a great star. The other — "another dress extra." Funny place, Hollywood, isn't it? Hundreds of girls were tested for Columbia's "Girls' School." A few lucky ones (left to right): Martha O'Driscoll, Peggy Moran, Marjorie Deane, Marjorie Lord, Jean Lucius