Photoplay (Jan-Jun 1938)

Payboy of the Western World (Continued from page 61) hair and an ear-yanking grin came in to file his daily piece for the papers. Will Rogers liked to kick around with the folks in Claremore whenever Hollywood and the busy world let him run away. Gene Autry tapped out the dispatch, accepted a stick of gum and got acquainted. The next night he played a few of his tunes and talked, learned about the show world and the big towns and Hollywood and stuff. Gene wasn't much good at railroading from then on. When he'd saved up fifty bucks he ordered a pass to New York. When he got there he quit his telegraphing job. For keeps. The screen was wide open and hungry for a Gene Autry when he finally drifted from small-time radio to Hollywood. Only nobody knew it. He came to Hollywood in a low, lean Western year. He didn't come to buck the cowboy star racket. He came to Hollywood because the boss of Republic studios, then Mascot, had once peddled Gene's records and knew the sure-fire pull of his voice. With misgivings — because he showed his screen greenness at once — they cast him in a serial called "The Phantom Empire." Nobody noticed him — in Hollywood. He was no Barrymore. From an acting standpoint he was as stiff and awkward as a muddy boot. But in the hay belt, and in the cheap admission city picture shows, where serials bloom, something different went on. Gene Autry was like manna to a starving section of forgotten — Hollywood forgotten — movie fans. He had what they liked — and they said so, out loud. The studio starred him in a Western feature. Since then they can't shoot Gene Autry's pictures fast enough. Today he carries along the whole Republic studio. Autry Westerns sell the entire program. Today Gene's the most popular Hollywood star in the world. Two to one over Taylor, three to one over Gable. Believe it or not. JUST recently Hollywood succumbed to this realization with a high fever. For the resulting delirium — have a look: Fifty to seventy-five Westerns are on studio programs for this year. Seven separate studios have lined up anywhere from six to twenty-six roughriding reelers aimed at the nabes and the sticks. Why? Well, I'll tell you later. There is only one retirement on record. Dick Foran, a Princeton boy, who never smelled branded beef in his life, has discarded his phoney chapparajos. It wasn't because his pictures flopped, nor because Dick flopped, nor because he married a Los Angeles society girl and went high hat. It was just because Warner's needed him for bigger stuff. They're hunting another cowboy now. George O'Brien is getting back in the saddle at RKO, and Colonel Tim McCoy is creaking leather once more. Buck Jones merely moved from Universal to Columbia. Ken Maynard forsakes his circus for Hollywood this winter, old Hooter Gibson is looking around for the right deal and even Tom Mix is talking comeback. Bill Boyd, at Paramount, is so solidly set in the Hopalong Cassidy series that nothing, not even Cecil B. De Mille, could shake him loose. sticks, you can thank him. But why? How? What did Gene have? What has he got now? Well, I'll tell you— if you must know. The boy's got sex appeal. He's the first cowboy star that ever had it in a sizable dose. Ninety per cent of his terrific flood of mail comes from the sweet pretty things. Old women want to mother him. Young ones want to marry him. Girls want him to be their sweetheart. You should read his mail. Or maybe you shouldn't. Some of it's pretty warm. And the paradox is this: he's about as much of a ladies' man as Hitler. He's shy, he blushes, he tightens up inside a mile of a skirt. His director has to coax him into a final fade-out peck with his leading lady. He's safely married and thoroughly domesticated. He goes to bed early. Doesn't smoke, doesn't drink. Even on the screen he's about as sinister as a bottle of milk, and just as fresh and clean. That's one reason Gene got off to a head start. If you remember, about four years back a hot wind of sex and sophistication swept over Hollywood — and the chill gust of a resentful public answered it. There was the clean-up campaign, the Will Hays "clamp downs," the Purity League. There were also a lot of people who were neither sophisticated, nor clever, nor smart, nor risque, and didn't want to be. They were country people. In them Gene plainly struck a responsive chord. But he could sing, too, and play. And so, for the first time in the long, roughand-tumble record of Western pictures, Gene brought something entertaining for women as well as men. And women, as everyone knows, rule the world. Women and the autocrats they serve — kids. That's what Gene Autry means to the millions in the South and the West and the small towns in every section of this country, Canada, South America, England and the Orient. But what about Hollywood? To Hollywood, producing Hollywood, Gene and his quiet staggering success is both a lesson and a promise. The lesson is never again to forget the downto-earth people upon whom the movies have always depended. The promise is the unlimited rewards to come from pictures prepared to please them. OENE AUTRY'S pictures cost around $50,000, which is very small potatoes as moving-picture budgets go. They gross between $200,000 and $250,000 as regularly as clockwork. But most strictly stick screen fare is cheaper than that. Feature-length movies, costing as low as $12,000, go out to get what they can where they can. Exhibitors play them because they're desperate for something to give the kids on Friday and Saturday, because the small-town family trade must have plain movies for plain people at a plain price. But they hurt in the long run. Straight Westerns and their stars will probably never return to the glorious days when Tom Mix drew $17,500 a week at Fox. They have to be dressed up expensively into pictures like "The Plainsman" to stand that. Gene Autry gets $7500 a picture, but only a few months ago he drew $250 a week. Smaller, independent studios make Westerns because most big majors with A ND you can blame all this on Gene Autry. Or, as I said, if you live in the LAST MINUTE REVIEWS * The Last Gangster — M-G-M * True Confession— Paramount EDWARD G. ROBINSON returns to the gangster roles that made him a star in this dramatic and often pathetic film. It's splendid cinema, a trifle heavy for squeamish audiences but magnificently, brutally effective. As a big shot, Robinson returns from Europe with his foreign bride to find rivals muscling in. He kills three of them but fails to beat the law. In prison he spends ten years, bitter in the knowledge that his wife has married another man, and that his son does not know him. Back in civilian life he also finds that former pals want only his buried fortune. They torture him to get it, finally kidnap his son. Rose Stradner of Vienna, in her first picture, proves exceptional. Jimmy Stewart has a thankless part and little opportunity. Douglas Scott and Lionel Stander have outstanding acting roles. This will move you deeply if you are capable of objective pity. Best performances: Edward G. Robinson Rose Stradner T HE current fashion for berserk comedy under the masterly direction of Wesley Ruggles here reaches its height. Taken seriously, the piece would be an excellent psychological study of a congenital liar. However, it is played broadly, and hence is enormously amusing but rather antisocial. Because, after all, murder isn't really laughable. Carole Lombard, married to struggling young lawyer Fred MacMurray, simply can't tell the truth. She goes hunting for a job; her prospective employer makes passes; and she dashes out, leaving hat and purse behind. When she returns to get them she finds the man murdered, and she can't resist confessing to the crime in order that her husband may attain fame defending her. Fred, believing in her, does get her free. She becomes a writer until at last she confesses the real truth to her husband. John Barrymore plays a drunk convincingly and Una Merkel is nice as Carole's friend. Best performances: Carole Lombard Fred MacMurray a weighty overhead can't afford to. At least, that was the general idea, until Darryl Zanuck made his bid for Gene. But more eyes are wide open now and Mr. Zanuck does not loom any more demented than a fox. A Gene Autry can sell many stars far more famous than himself in more territories than you ever imagined. He can swell the returns from their pictures and build their names, too, in that now very respectable orphans' home of the movies — the once lowly sticks. O. 'N the social side, however, I am afraid Gene Autry will never slice much ice or press the tempo of Hollywood up or down a beat. For his twenty-eight years and Gallic ancestry, he is about as lively and spectacular as an oyster. He and his quiet, Missouri-bred wife, married long before fame snatched him by the shirttail, live in a modest house in the San Fernando Valley, and he's just bought a few more acres over near Burbank for his horses. The Autrys never go out stepping; in fact, Gene doesn't own even an ordinary business suit or a pair of lace oxfords. He had one pair some time ago but he says he lost them and his wife has to believe him. They wanted Gene to show up as a guest star when Rudy Vallee opened at the Cocoanut Grove the other night but someone said "tuxedo," and Gene fled. He's never had one on in his life. He travels around in a subdued show cowboy garb, nothing to compare with the resplendent sartorial sunbursts of Tom Mix in his salad days. His idea of a good time is to load his white-stockinged black mount, "Champ," in a specially built trailer and go out on the road for personal appearances. Folks like him and he likes folks. Incidentally, he breaks house records wherever he goes, and he pads his picture income past the $100,000 a year bracket thereby. Radio is after him this fall, and he has just turned down $5000 a week for a circus jaunt. But up until this year he didn't even keep a record of his checks. n E talks with a sparing drawl, but his quiet Dutch-blue eyes show that still water runs deep. He's always amiable and nice to get along with, but he knows what he has and what to do about it. People don't impress him. His wife lured him to the Troc, cowboy rig and all, just once — a few days ago. Walter Winchell spotted him, and Gene will always remember Winchell's crack, "You've got a swell press agent — whoever he is," — because he doesn't even have a press agent! Gene left before twelve o'clock that night. But latest reports have it that he's coming back for more. He's been seen a lot recently at the night spots, in full regalia, and — annoyed that more of the celebrities don't recognize him! See what Cal York says about this on page 71. There's a striking something about him that recalls Will Rogers, another cowboy who did all right in Hollywood. It couldn't have come from the casual contact back in Claremore; it's just that Gene and Will were the same breed of man underneath. Gene Autry has what Will Rogers had — the common touch. And like Will, he can't forget his home town. The proudest moment of his life took place a short time ago. That was when Tioga talked about changing its name to Autry Springs, Texas! 84