Photoplay (Jan-Sep 1937)

has a reputation for daring and— for not bringing his observercompanions back alive. Miriam Hopkins is not like any previous Hopkins She is not a seductive cynic, consciously attractive to weaklings. She demonstrates that a woman in love can't be cynical, and that she may be a weakling, herself. In the picture, the two co-stars never face each other until the story is two thirds told. Most of Hopkins' scenes are with Louis Havward; most of Muni's scenes are with Hayward. That makes Mr. Hayward someone to become curious about. He has the biggest role in the picture. He isn't the Hayward who recently married Margaret Sullavan; he's the Hayward devoted to Ida Lupino. He's tall, dark, English-looking, without an English accent. He was born in South Africa, educated in France, and at eighteen put himself on the stage by buying a half-interest in a small stock company. Among other things, he played Armani in "Camille" — and "reeked." By the time he went broke, he had a great deal of bad acting out of his system. He was too young to play heroes in anyone else's stock cornpans', so he did what he should have done in the first place — he acted his age. He became a juvenile. London's favorite juvenile. On Broadway, he was co-starred with the Lunts. Then Hollywood discovered him. He made a picture called "The Flame Within," and stole it, playing a young neurotic. That meant a contract. It also meant that Hollywood stamped him as "a young neurotic type." After a while, he really worked up complexes. He wanted to play something else, anything else. He never got the chance — until Universal, to keep him busy, let him play a light-hearted part in an unimportant picture, titled "The Luckiest Girl in Town." Litvak, who had never seen him in anything else, happened to see him in that. And seeing him, Litvak said, "That boy could do drama." Now, because a Hungarian director rediscovered a Hollywood discovery, Louis Hayward has one of the big roles of the year. The story of "The Woman I Love" opens in Paris, in 1915, with the first meeting between Hopkins and Hayward, a young French officer to whom she is unwillingly attracted. He falls madly in love with her; she tries not to fall in love with him — and discovers that she has failed as he leaves for the Front. There, as a member of the Escadrille, he becomes Muni's flying partner, learns to woiship Muni. Then, on a brief furlough in Paris, he makes the agonizing discovery that the woman he loves is Muni's wife . . . The scene we see is the one in which the lovers celebrate Muni's return from the Front. We watch them from behind a tree on Stage 6. The tree is part of a small grove. In the grove is a carnival in action. And the carnival is genuine, even if the trees aren't. There are two Ferris wheels, a merry-go-round, a whirligig, a miniature rollercoaster (labeled "Voyage aux Enfers"), side shows, shooting galleries games of chance cheap portrait galleries. And all in working order, to the delight of a milling mob of extras dressed as soldiers, nurses or civilians of 1915. Hayward is wearing an olive-drab uniform, which he tells us is not a movie boner. All French soldiers did not wear blue. Hopkins is very much 1915 (but still attractive!) in a blackand-white checked dress, which goes all the way down to the Beaverboard that is masquerading as the ground in this scene To the dress is fastened a clip-watch — a gift from Litvak. And on her natural-blonde head sits a stiff sailor-straw, low-crowned, which she insists she is going to wear this summer of 1937. It will be right in style. They go from concession to concession, gay, excited, frantically forgetting war, deliriously happy to be together, even on a Ferris wheel. Miriam, approaching the Ferris wheel scene, eyes the apparatus with vague distrust. It looks too realistic ; it looks as if it might be a 1915 model Ferris wheel. And its topmost arc is forty dizzying feet off the studio floor. But no sacrifice is too great for art Hayward helps her into one of the basket-seats which tilts backward crazily as she sits down. And does it again, when he climbs in beside her. She feigns terror, and grips the guard rail for dear life, as the wheel starts, swinging them backward and upward. She gets a laugh from the crowd. (The "take" isn't being made yet. This is a trial trip.) Just as their basket reaches the top, the wheel stops. The operator, who has been marooning people up there all day as a gag, shouts up, "A cable's broken." Miriam stays amused the first five minutes, enjoying the bird's-eye view of the carnival, but when the operator still insists that a cable is broken — well, this is carrying a joke too far! She appeals to Litvak. He backs up the operator. Fifteen minutes later, Miriam still is forty feet up in the air — and beginning to wonder if the cable is broken. It is. And two hours and forty-five minutes pass before it is repaired. Two years and forty-five days to Miriam! C IMPLY by passing through a sound stage door, we step from a wartime carnival into a modernistic suite of rooms in a swank New York hotel. The camera and lights are set up in the drawing room of the suite. Beside the camera sits Director Mark Sandrich. In front of the camera are Ginger Rogers and Eric Blore. They are making a scene for "Stepping Toes." Fred Astaire is nowhere in sight. He is supposed to be beyond yonder closed door, in the adjoining suite. That's what Blore is there to talk about, Blore being the hotel manager. It seems that Ginger is a musical comedy star, and Fred is a ballet dancer named Petroff (real name, Peters) They are in love, although Ginger doesn't know it. A series of circumstances and Fred's publicity manager (Edward Everett Horton) conspire to insinuate that they are secretly married. Blore unlocks the door between the rooms. Then it appears they aren't married Blore changes the lock. Finally, in intense distress, he asks her (in this Christy Cabcmne directs Preston Foster, Margaret Irving and Edith Craig a gaudy scene from in "The Outcasts of Poker Flat" over at RKO-Radio 59