Photoplay (Jan-Sep 1937)

scene) if she is Mrs. Petroff or — Miss Keene. Why, says Ginger, she is Mrs. Petroff. (She and Fred have married secretly just this afternoon, so that they can become divorced very publicly.) Blore is suffused with pleasure. A great worry visibly leaves him. He says, glowingly, "Ah, tonight I can rest with an easy conscience." Ginger nods understandingly. "So can I," she says, as mild as milk. She asks Sandrich if that is the way to read the line. He nods, smilingly. The more unintentional it sounds, the more amusing a double meaning can be. Blore gives her the key to the new lock, leaves. Ginger considers a moment, then tiptoes to the door, unlocks it. Sandrich, in rehearsal, tells her that the action will end there. Ginger suggests a bit of backward tiptoeing, ending at a chair, while she watches the door expectantly. Sandrich likes the added feminine touch to the scene. It isn't easy to forget Ginger. But we try to forget; we try. We walk to the opposite end of the lot. We pull open a swinging door that weighs a ton (it's soundproof). We step into a he-man barroom. This is the colorful setting of the first day's shooting on a robust bit of Americana — "The Outcasts of Poker Flat," starring Preston Foster. How a full-length movie could be made from Bret Harte's brief bit of fiction about the early gold-rush country baffles us until we discover what the scenarists had clone. The camera, at the moment, is focused on a poker table, where some prospectors are reaching for their guns, claiming the dealer has dealt off the bottom of the pack. Into the action steps Foster, in the highest high hat he'll ever wear, a cutaway coat and a frilled shirt — the garb of the gentleman-gambler. He eases out the dealer, takes his place, saying the customers are right. At his elbow, sotto voce, Margaret Irving chides him about his generosity at cards, his coldness with women. She hasn't finished when Edith Craig runs into the scene with word that Cherokee Sal is dying. Foster resents Cherokee's dying, leaving a baby — the only baby in the camp. Thus is the stage set for Preston to have a dramatic change of Can you tell which little Mauch twin this is? Even the director has to take his word for it on the set of "The Prince and the Pauper" where both little boys are working. They declare it's Bobby here, in this tense scene with Murray Kinnell The dramatic climax of "Slave Ship" being filmed at Catalina by 20th Century-Fox is the mutiny of the crew led by Arthur Hohl (with the knife). Wallace Beery is just below heart. And it's also plain that the scenarists are incorporating another famous Bret Harte story, "The Luck of Roaring Camp" — a tale about a baby in a rough mining camp. KJEXT door, at Paramount, we stumble upon another bar. We stumble, because the smoke is so thick. This, we deduce, is a present-day bar. Our deductions are correct. This is a set for "Internes Can't Take Money," co-starring Joel McCrea and Barbara Stanwyck. Joel is an interne who, in an emergency, operates on a gangster wounded in a gun battle and saves his life. He hopes for nothing from it, except possibly another encounter with Barbara, who, through no fault of her own, is involved in the shooting. But the gangster, in his gratitude, sees that Joel is handed a thousand dollars. It is in this scene that Joel takes the money without knowing it. He has stopped in the bar for refreshments for a party. The barkeeper gives him his package; then, after a quick look around, slips him a sealed envelope, tells the puzzled Joel to put it in his pocket without opening it. Joel quizzically complies. For a second "take," the director demands more smoke drifting in front of the camera. A prop man starts a smudge that makes the set look like a rubber factory on fire. He does it with two gadgets about the size and shape of coffee pots, with the smoke issuing from the spouts. Bellows, placed where you might expect handles, make it issue. Hut what — what — is the definition of the odor? What is he burning in his smudge pots? Imagine . resin on fire, and you have it. It is resin. [ please turn to page 79 ] 60