Photoplay (Jan-Jun 1940)

?Mfywovd'i FOR DELUXE TRAVEL TO AND FROM California Dedicated entirely to first-class travel, these two extra-fare Santa Fe streamliners provide the utmost in train beauty, comfort and speed, and Fred Harvey cuisine, for journeys to and from California. The Super Chief, departing from Chicago on Tuesday and Saturday evenings, is the only all-Pullman streamliner on a 39% hour schedule to Los Angeles. The Chief is the hours-fastest daily all-Pullman train between Chicago and Los Angeles, and the only daily streamliner between these points • It will be wise to make reservations early on these two magnificent streamlined trains. T. B. Gallaher, P. T. M. Santa Fe System Lines 1 347 Railway Exchange Chicago We Cover the Studios give the whole scene that jiggly, car-inmotion look. Fred and Jean wrap up and get to work in an earnest love scene. "Cut!" decrees Wes Ruggles. "That's fine." But Fred isn't satisfied. He thinks he's a lousy lover. "Don't you think I could get a little more into my kissing?" he asks Ruggles. "I don't know," replies Wes. "But if you want me to, I'll send out for a Hollywood High School boy to teach you how!" r ERSONALLY, we can't imagine anything more terrifying than a H.H.S. Casanova in action. Unless it's "Black Friday," the chiller that Universal is brewing for macabre-minded movie lovers. "The House of Seven Gables," next door, isn't any too cheerful, either, as you'll know if you've read your Hawthorne. Vincent Price, Margaret Lindsay, George Sanders and Nan Grey are suffering through the long, drawn-out curse of the Pyncheons at Universal this month, too. But alongside of "Black Friday," a cozy little curse is a mere bagatelle. "Black Friday" comes across with ten — count 'em — ten bona fide murders and one execution! Not a bad average for Karloff and Lugosi. Oddly enough, on the set we find Boris comparatively unmangled by make-up, except for a Hindenburg hairpiece that bristles like a vegetable brush. Odder still, the set doesn't have a dark shadow, graveyard or haunted house within sight. It's just a regulation Hollywood night-club layout. Luscious Anne Nagel steps up on the band stand and croons a song. The story's about a skilled brain surgeon who transplants a dying criminal's cerebellum to injured college professor Stanley Ridges. From then on Universal scenarists have dreamed up some extremely novel ways to put a murder victim out of his miseries. It has also been our conviction that there are few tougher star gentlemen in town than Brian Donlevy. We arrive on the "Down Went McGinty" set at Paramount, then, quite naturally expecting some rough stuff. We know it's a rowdy travesty on municipal corruption in a big American city. We know that Brian has plenty of battles with Akim Tamiroff, a vicious political dictator, until good wife Muriel Angelus gets to work on his conscience. Frankly, we expect some fireworks. But when we step inside the heavy, soundproof door, we find Brian and Muriel knee-deep in a nursery scene. And Brian is down on his hands and knees playing with an electric train! Poor Preston Sturges, the playwright, is on his very first directing assignment with "Down Went McGinty." He's tearing his scalp lock out by the roots, trying to get his scenes shot on schedule. But he made a mistake when he let Donlevy get near that electric train. "Hurry up, Brian," pleads Sturges. "Just a minute," Brian beams. "Now if I can route the track over that bridge — " UVER at RKO, too, a couple of darling kids, Scotty Beckett and Mary Lou Harrington, have considerably softened the hard bachelor crust of a chap we'd never tag as a home man. Cary Grant is having the time of his life, we diser, playing papa in "My Favorite Wife," with Irene Dunne. "It's the lii t time I've ever been a father," grins Cary, "and believe me, it's swell!" Cary is sitting back in an (Continued from page 51) easy chair wrapped up in an atrocious leopard skin bathrobe and puffing a pipe peacefully, while Scotty and Mary Lou climb all over his knees and muss up his thick hair. "My Favorite Wife" is another of those insane comedies to out-awful "The Awful Truth." Leo McCarey is again producing it, but this time Garson Kanin, RKO's wonder boy, has the director's load on his young shoulders. The plot parallels "Too Many Husbands" for its general idea, only in this one, Cary has too many wives. Briefly, Irene, an exploress, disappears, to be declared legally dead. Whereupon Cary marries Gail Patrick. Whereupon Irene returns out of the nowhere just as Cary and Gail set off for a honeymoon in Yosemite Valley. Whereupon Irene sets out after them. Whereupon — it's a case of hellzapoppin! You can bet on Dunne to win in the end. We watch Garson Kanin guide Cary through a scene with the kids. They get along so well, it's over before we know it, and Cary is being dragged over to the set piano to play tunes for his picture progeny. It happens between every scene, he admits. "This is what I get for being a family man," he complains, but we know he's loving it. nE can't help wondering, though, how Cary would feel about fatherhood if he had someone like Little Orvie to handle. If you've ever read Booth Tarkington's sagas of that young Hoosier holy terror, you'll have a good idea about the problems of film parents Ernest Truex and Dorothy Tree. "Little Orvie" has been narrowed down to the story of Orvie's terrific desire for a Great Dane. Johnny Sheffield (Tarzan's son) is playing Orvie, and the Great Dane is one of the biggest, lionlike dogs in Hollywood. It frightens us just to look at him. And Daisy Mothershed and Ray Turner, the two Negro actors who have to lead him by the collar, are a good two shades lighter than usual. Johnny Sheffield is about the only principal who seems to enjoy this scene. And that includes the dog. For the take they lead him into a tiny shack set, the kitchen of Daisy's cot With Paul himself dividing his time between stage and screen, Edward G. Robinson gets his first "Muni" role with "Dr. Ehrlich's Magic Bullet" tage. She's supposed to be hiding the mutt for Orvie. It's so cluttered up with props that the Dane hasn't room to budge. He suddenly and suspiciously tries it anyway, swipes his tail on the red-hot kitchen stove, and in a couple of seconds there isn't much left of the "Little Orvie" set. The fire extinguishers come out and pandemonium reigns, as they say. The Dane is long gone at once, but Johnny Sheffield is grinning broadly. Now, we wonder just what Little Orvie had to do with this? Anyway, Johnny's a pretty cute kid. But for a couple of the cutest kiddies of the month, we'll be forced to pick Busby Berkeley's dual discoveries at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Barbara and Beverly, who are doing their eightmonths-old best to steal "Forty Little Mothers" from veteran Eddie Cantor. Barbara and Beverly are two separate babies — twins, in fact But in this picture, they're the same baby! You see, small babies can work only a very limited time on Hollywood sets, according to rigid California law. Barbara works in the morning; Beverly works in the afternoon. And try to tell them apart! Beverly is on the afternoon shift when we catch Eddie Cantor in grease paint for the first time in two long years. He's singing "Little Curly Hair" to Beverly. As for Beverly, she can take Cantor's songs or leave them. She yawns two or three times to break up the scene. Then she wails. "She's cutting teeth!" declares Eddie. "How do you know?" asks Berkeley. "How do I know," bristles Eddie. "And me with five daughters?" "Forty Little Mothers" sounds like good fun to us. It's the story of a teacher who isn't at all welcome in a fancy girls' school. The good-looking professor whose place Eddie takes, got bounced for making love to the pupils. So the girls give Eddie the love treatment, hoping results will be the same. They aren't at all — but it's a springboard for Cantoresque chuckles. Bonita Granville (so grown up now!) and Rita Johnson are sitting around raptly watching Eddie's maneuvers with Beverly. Just then Diana Lewis walks on the set — her first day in her first choice M-G-M part. Diana, of course, is the brand new Mrs. William Powell, and don't think the gang doesn't know it. Just for a second, Eddie hesitates on the set with Beverly still in his arms. Then he steps across and places her on Diana's lap. "Rockabye-Baby" he sings, in his best mammy manner. The whole set joins in. Poor Diana — such blushes! But that's what you get around Hollywood sets — and you've got to take it. UnE star we know who is certainly learning to take it, too, but in a little different way, is Tyrone Power. Ty had told us "Dance with the Devil" was a sock part for him, but we didn't take him literally. Now when we walk on the big Movietone City stage, we know what Ty meant. It's a prison scene and Ty and tough Lloyd Nolan are about to square off for a battle. Director Henry Hathaway stands by, watching keenly with level blue eyes. Ty's in grey prison cloth, mussed up and mean looking. They're about to go. "Dance with the Devil" isn't sophisticated high life drama, as you might think from the rather naughty title. It's a picture about a vastly wealthy and socially prominent stockbroker, (Edward Arnold) who fails and goes to the 86 PHOTOPLAY