42nd Street (Warner Bros.) (1933)

eC Advance Feature Chorus Girls in ‘42nd Street’ Placed on Training Schedule Ensemble Director of Big, Dramatic Musical Film Regulated Diet and Sleeping Hours of the Cast USBY BERKELEY, while training his great chorus of 150 blonde and brunette beauties for the Warner Bros. big dramatic production with a gigantic musical spectacle, “‘42nd Street,’’ which comes to the Theatre on eee , put his maidens on a typical football training schedule, with supervised meals and regulated sleeping hours. There was good reason for Berkeley’s upsetting a show girl’s prerogative of late hours and a lobster for lunch. The ‘‘42nd Street’’ number for which the young women were being trained was no ordinary dance number. It had been planned to climax the whole impressive production named in its honor. One whole great sound stage had been held in reserve for weeks while workmen prepared for the spectacle. That dance number alone was to take a place of importance in the production equal to the long list of stellar names assembled for the one picture, Every girl in the chorus had been selected personally by Berkelay, chorus impressario whose New York ensembles will long be remembered. Every girl had been chosen for her special place in that chorus, not alone for herself but in relation to the girls next to her. Every girl was important, not alone for her own beauty, ability and personality, but for the fact that her presence in a particular spot in the chorus complimented and emphasized the beauty and ability and personality of her nearest neighbors. Berkeley’s chorus psychology is that a chorus must be pleasing to everyone as a composite and that every individual and small group in it must also appeal to a certain percentage of every audience. He makes no effort to find girls who are alike. He has blonde, brunet’ and read heads, he has girls re rangy, girls who are plump; who are vivacious, girls whose veauty is of the languid clinging type. He chooses some who are soft = round, others who are athletic.| training table for the girls and to| Warren. But in the final arrangement of them he works painstakingly to “paint” them into an irresistible whole. Each Girl Important This makes each single girl doubly important to the whole chorus. No one could just take the place of the slightly oriental Renee Whitney. No understudy could fill.the vacancy that would be left if Pat Wing were unable to fill her place in that chorus. A dozen others were equally important, ‘‘key girls’’ in the screen picture which Berkeley had designed. With them—with all of them in fact —Berkeley could take no chances. He wanted them healthy during the two weeks this particular number was being manufactured for the cameras and he put them under training rules to see that they were. Berkeley and his assistant, Bill O’Donnell, set up a kind of amateur police system of their own, aided and advised by the studio police officers who had been instructed to help. | Ate With the Girls | The first step was to establish a supervise their meals. The consumption of pastries and delectible tit-bits such as shrimp salads and cheese omelets fell off amazingly. The studio cafe waitresses were limited in the foods they could serve the girls. Either Berkeley or O’Donnell ate at the girl’s training table every noon. As a second move to protect the health of his girls until the ‘‘hbig number’’ was finished, Berkeley persuaded Warner Bros. to supply him with two passenger buses which he used to collect the girls in the morning and to take them home at night. | Checked Up At Night | However Berkeley knows only too well that you can lead a young girl to her home by such methods, but you can’t make her sleep. So he and his assistant made the rounds of the hotel ballrooms, the night clubs and the theatre lobbies each night to check up still further on the members of his chorus. It was all very good for the girls but a little tough on Mr. Berkeley and Mr. O’Donnell who slept less and less as their chorus girls slept more and more. But since neither Berkeley or O’Donnell appear in the picture tue puffs under their eyes didn’t matter. Anyway it worked. Every girl was founds in her place every working day during the making of the great ‘<49nd Street’? number. They complained a little but they danced a lot. And they kept their health. The dances and ensembles in ‘‘ 42nd Street’’ were all created and staged by Mr. Berkeley. These musical numbers form a show within a show for ‘‘42nd Street,’’ which is a picture of theatrical life back-stage, taken from the novel by Bradford Ropes. It earries an all star cast, which ineludes Warner Baxter, Bebe Daniels, George Brent, Una Merkel, Ruby Keeler, Guy Kibbee, Ned Sparks, Dick Powell, Ginger Rogers and Allen Jenkins. The sereen play is by Rian James and James Seymour and the direction by Lloyd Bacon. The song hits were written by Al. Dubin and Harry et Advance Feature Hollywood Stars Anxious for George Brentas Leading Man Although in Hollywood Only a Year, Handsome Irishman Is in Great Demand at all Studios HE most sought after leading man in Hollywood is a young Irishman who has been there about a year! He is George Brent, who plays opposite Bebe Daniels in Warner Bros. epic of metropolitan and backstage life, ‘‘42nd Street,’’ with drama, comedy and spectacle intermingled, which comes to the Theatre on Brent has the added distinction of being Ruth Chatterton’s husband. Brent’s picture playing has largely been confined to Miss Chatterton’s pictures—but not because he wasn’t in demand any where else. His first picture with his future wife had hardly been completed before a momentous message came through from another large studio. Garbo wanted him! She was starting a picture almost immediately, and had decided that he was the only one who could play opposite her in it. Conflicting schedules were all that kept him from that particular plum. He would have liked to have done it. Where even the Barrymores consider it no slight honor to be called, he felt himself fortunate to be chosen. As they always do when a player has made a mark in any studio, many opportunities to work elsewhere on loan were offered him by other studios. Cecil B. De Mille wanted him for “The Sign of the Cross”’—but again a conflicting schedule kept him from accepting. He was loaned, finally, to Paramount for the leading male role in “Luxury Liner’—his first loan. Acting ability alone doesn’t account for the demand for young Brent’s services, although it is probably the chief reason for that demand. He has one of the most dryly humorous personalities the screen has ever known. His humor is as pervasive as a summer day, and equally as pleasant. Besides which he plays excellently, tennis, polo, golf and bridge. escended tT kins a Bo es lee eee aoe Irish cavalrymen who served with the British army, he is one of the best horsemen in the film colony. Most important of all, perhaps— and this may account for the large number of feminine demands made to have him play opposite the stars of foreign lots—he is one of the best-looking young men ever to have been seen in pictures. He can’t help his looks, of course. He can’t help his blarney either. But maybe it’s just as well, say the wise ones at the film colony, that he married early in his Hollywood experience. The demand might have been too great even for pleasure. Brent plays a role in “42nd Street” dangerously close to that enacted by many of Hollywood’s prominent players in real life—that of the actor-lover whose own abilities are overshadowed by those of the lady he loves—in this picture role, Bebe Daniels. The working out of this love problem forms one of the chief highlights of this picture, which Warner Bros.’ executiv:s consider one of the best to come out of their studio in years. Others in the cast of this bona-fide all-star production inelude Warner Baxter, Una Merkel, Ruby Keeler, Guy Kibbee, Ned Sparks, Dick Powell, Ginger Rogers, Allen Jennd many others. Direction was ee Sages pee. Advance Feature Stage Experience Required To Land Role in All-Star Musical Hit, *‘42nd Street’’ Ee Really a Show Within a Show and Footlight Training Was Vital To Catch Tang of Story VERY actor, including stars, featured or bit players, as well as a chorus of 150, who appears in the Warner Bros. production of ‘‘42nd Street,’’ which opens at the.................... PMeniTe DT oe , was selected for his or her role, in part, because he or she had had stage experience. In fact. this was one of the essential points in this selection. So closely is the picture associated with the atmosphere and the romance-of stage life that it was deemed necessary for every individual who had any connection with the making of the picture to have had such experience, including the director, his associates, the writers of both the script and songs and the technicians. | 3 For the picture is a show within| as been on the stage or sereen a show. It carries a well defined dramatic plot, which involves the life behind the wings of a musical comedy company rehearsing for its opening performance. Consequently the entire revue is presented at the various stages of its progress of rehearsal and on its opening night. In order to catch the true flavor of life behind the footlights, the real story of the players behind the scenes, with their particularized romances, their loves and their tragedies, it was considered necessary that each individual have a thorough experience and sympathetic understanding of such an existence. All Started on Stage Warner Baxter, who heads an allstar cast, was well known on the stage, and had had thorough stock training before he thought of entering picture work. Bebe Daniels, who has the leading feminine role, ever since she was a child of five. George Brent, who has made such rapid strides in screen work in the past year, is really a newcomer to Hollywood, most of his career having been before the footlights, having appeared only recently in “Love, Honor and Betray,’ opposite Alice Brady. Una Merkel’s training was on the stage where she soared to success in such plays as“Coquette,” “Two by Two” and “The Poor Nut.” Ruby Keeler, who has the ingenue role, makes her first venture on the screen in “42nd Street,” having been one of the Ziegfeld girls, and long known for her musical comedy work. She was appearing in ‘‘Show Girl’? shortly before she was engaged to work in the present picture. Guy Kibbee, Ned Sparks and Allen Jenkins all appeared before the footlights before they took up their sereen careers, while Ginger Rogers was noted as a musical comedy star. Dick Powell, while recently an orchestra leader and master of cere Here’s a group of the 150 of Hollywood’s most beautiful showgirls, seen in the musical sequences of “42nd Street.”” That’s the 10-star film about which you’re hearing so much praise. Cut No. 28 Cut 45ce Matic monies, had also toured the country on the stage. Henry B. Walthall points back to a thorough stage training. Edward J. Nugent, Clarence Nordstrom, Robert MceWade and George E. Stone are all well known stage players who have taken up screen work. Al Dubin and Harry Warren, who wrote the song hits for ‘‘42nd Street,’’ have been connected with the stage for years, writing lyrics and music. As song writers they play the part which they actually are in real life in ‘‘42nd Street,’’ as also does Harry Akst, the noted pianist and eomposer in the picture. Director Lloyd Bacon is an old stage player, having started his career by following in the footsteps of his father, the famous Frank Bacon of ‘‘Lightnin,’’ before taking up directional work. Even Director and Author Busby Berkeley, who created and staged the dance numbers and ensembles, is one of the best known directors of musical comedy on the Broadway stage, and probably had directed more musical shows than any contemporary. Bradford Ropes, from whose novel the screen play is taken, knows theatrical life from actual experience as a hoofer and has done considerable writing for the stage. Rian James and James Seymour were both New York newspaper men who drifted into playwriting before they began writing for the sereen. The great chorus that appears in the various scenes of the musical show within the show were all selected from the New York and Los Angeles stages, from the night clubs and gardens and cafes, and all know life as represented by the characters in the play, The entire production is, in fact, the nearest to one hundred per cent theatrical of any piece prepared for the screen. Page Fifteen