Air Force (Warner Bros.) (1943)

STAR AND PRODUCTION STORIES George Tobias Doesn’t Separate Life and Art George Tobias, the Hollywood character actor, does not believe in making a distinction between life and art. When he is preparing for a role in a motion picture, Tobias does not seclude himself in a room with a dramatic coach, a copy of the script and a volume of Stanislavsky’s memoirs. He sallies forth into the great outdoors, meeting real life more than halfway and mingling with the characters in their actual milieu. “Tt is this way,” says Tobias. “Before I had any theatrical training and when I decided to go on the stage I went out and worked among different people instead of studying Shakespeare. Shakespeare doesn’t constitute the American theatre. I got personal experience of how people talk and act and eat and make love by mixing with them. I worked as a barker, as a worker in an iron foundry, a munitions factory, the Brooklyn Navy Yard, and as a cement mixer and a bricklayer. I learned more that way than I would have in a dozen courses on how to act.” Plays Corporal Tobias was sitting on the set of “Air Force,’ the Warner Bros. saga of the United States Air Corps at war in the Pacific, opening Friday at the Strand Theatre. He was wearing the grease-stained uniform of a corporal on a B-17 bomber. Over the left breast pocket was a small identification tag reading WEINBERG, for Tobias plays the role of Bo Weinberg, a former New Jersey cab driver who becomes involved in the Midway and Coral Sea battles. Director Howard Hawks and his cast had just finished re-enacting a sequence of the Coral Sea battle, with Jap Zeros and Boeing Flying Fortresses battling it out to the finish. There were guns spitting real flame and smoke pouring all over the set, and Tobias’ face was smudged and streaked with sweat as he relaxed between scenes. “Now take my part in this picture,” said Tobias. “I know this sort of guy from personal contact. I once worked as a hackie in Manhattan. I’ve also flown a plane and handled guns. I have a collection of pistols and rifles at my ranch in San Fer Still AF 621; Mat 101—15c GEORGE TOBIAS plays the role of 2nd engineer in the crew of the “Mary Ann,” Boeing B-17 and star of Warner Bros.’ “Air Force” opening Friday at the Strand Theatre. nando. I think I know just how a guy like Weinberg would talk and react in these situations. That’s something you could never learn except by watching and living with the real thing.” For one of his first stage roles, in “The Hairy Ape,” Tobias went to Belfast, Ireland, to absorb the necessary atmosphere. He worked his way across as a stoker on a passenger freighter. When he was touring in “The Fool,” in which he played a coal miner, he visited various mines in Pennsylvania and hobnobbed with the men. He has played more than fourteen nationalities on the screen, among them Russians, Poles and Greeks. He learned about the Poles when he worked in a carbarn in New York. He got to know Russians well when he was laying cobblestones. He has made an extensive study of Greeks. “You don’t imitate these types of nationalities when you’re acting,” Tobias explained. “You merely assimilate the characteristics into your performance. For instance, I hardly change my dialect from one role to another. The dialect isn’t very important. It’s the performance, the intonation, the movement of the body that counts.” John Ridgely Opened Doors In Film Debut John Ridgely sat all day on the set waiting until it was time for him to stand and open the door for Lana Turner. He thought they would never call him. When they finally did, he had to open the door again and again and again. He found that opening a door in front of a movie camera is not as simple as it sounds. So they kept him practicing Mat 104—15c JOHN RIDGELY is Captain Quincannon, pilot of the Flying Fortress, “‘“Mary Ann,” in Warner Bros.’ story of air warfare in the Pacific, “Air Force,” at the Strand. until he was more or less of an expert. It got almost as tiresome as the waiting had been, even though it was Lana Turner who entered when he opened the door. But at least it was a start for Ridgely. This door scene, which took place in “They Won’t Forget,” opened on a long, winding road which has led to his stellar “break” with John Garfield, Gig Young and Harry Carey in Warner Bros.’ “Air Force,” opening Friday at the Strand Theatre. In the interim—“They Won’t Forget” was in 1937— most of what Ridgely has had to do was open doors. Once in a while he got to close one. He was an elevator operator, a bartender, a policeman, a grocery clerk, a stenographer and had a score of these jobs in from 15 to 40 pictures per year, but all the parts took no longer on the screen than it takes to put your hand on a door knob, twist it gently, and pull. He appeared in everything from “Torchy Blane in Panama” and “Nancy Drew and the Hidden Staircase,” to the forthcoming Frank Capra hit, “Arsenic and Old Lace.” He was beginning to regret that day in 1931 that he wrapped his Stanford University diploma in mothballs, and headed for Pasadena to learn the trade of an actor at the Community Playhouse, where he was first “discovered” as Private Didier in “Paths of Glory.” But he happened to open the door to the Green Room cafe on the Warner lot one day, and this time it was for director Howard Hawks, then casting for “Air Force.” Hawks promoted him to a captaincy, the role of Captainpilot Quincannon of the Boeing B-17 bomber, “Mary Ann.” P.S. There isn’t a door to open or close in the whole script. Still FE 76; Mat 109—15c FAYE EMERSON plays one of the few female parts in Warner Bros.’ “Air Force,” saga of a B-17 bomber in action over the Pacific. The picture is now at the Strand. Faye Emerson Takes Studio Set by Storm In a small degree, at least, the boys on Stage No. 5 at Warner Bros. knew and _ precisely sympathize with the way Johnny Doughboy felt when Ann Sheridan made her recent tour of the army camps in her knock-your-eye-out gown. One day Faye Emerson became the first woman to walk on Stage No. 5 during four months of shooting on a picture. This Miss Emerson is a nice young person, and she is quite pretty, and she is regarded by Warner Bros, as one of its most promising young players. And that is why she was assigned to join John Garfield, Harry Carey, Gig Young, George Tobias, Jim Brown and the others in the cast of “Air Force” on that particular sound stage. It’s not that these gentlemen were in the same predicament as Uncle Sam’s trainees in the camps in the sense that for days, often for weeks, and sometimes for months, they never saw a feminine face. Only Surrounded On the contrary, they were surrounded by just the charming creatures one would expect on a large studio lot. There were the lines of. Hollywood’s most beautiful dancing chorines learning their routines for “Thank Your Lucky Stars” on a neighboring sound stage. At lunch one saw Bette Davis and Miss Sheridan and others. But that’s just it — these boys in “Air Force” were surrounded. They found themselves with water all about them, but none to drink. In a world of plenty, they starved. In the crowds, they were lonely. For Stage No. 5 has been a no-woman’s-land. The boys in “Air Force” saw the little glamor lovelies flit to the other stages on their way to work in the morning. But in their working day, the walls closed about them. The lock was _ clicked. But one day the _ outlook brightened. Howard Hawks, the director, called all the fellows together at the close of shooting and said, ‘‘You will be interested to know that Miss Faye Emerson has been selected to play the girl in the picture. She will start work here on Stage No. 5 tomorrow.” They were glad to take down the “no-woman’s-land” sign. Hollywood Air Photography Has Own Brand of Thrills First, Just Consider the Case of Veteran Elmer Dyer Elmer Dyer and Charley Marshall, air photographers for Warner Bros.’ “Air Force,” now at the Strand Theatre, are a couple of bronzed, middle-aged fellows who can’t buy insurance. Their work, just a jump and a half from death, won’t allow it. Dyer, elder of the two, admits to 50 years, the last 23 of which he’s been dodging weather, the ground and things flying through it to bring to the screen most of the thrilling air shots witnessed in the moyies. Marshall, his junior by a few years, has photographed nearly as many pictures. Between them, they have Hollywood’s aerial photography sewed up tight. Most of the cameramen there say they can have it. Elmer, a slow-speaking, rawboned man whose voice has the twang of the Middle-West, 22 started shooting air scenes in 1919. His first picture, “The Great Air Mail Robbery,” was shot from an old Jenny discarded by the government after World War I. “I got the job because the real cameraman, Milt Moore, got air-sick. I can understand now why. The ships, bailing wire jobs, were flown by Omar Locklear and Skeets Elliott, a couple of wing-walkers in their spare time. I held on with one hand and cranked my camera with the other.” With Hawks in 1926 Elmer next did some pictures for Tom Mix. Then came “Wings,” daddy air picture of them all. This set him up in the business. Howard Hawks, director of the current “Air Force,” hired him for the first of five air pictures he’s directed, “The Air Circus.” That was in 1926. Dyer’s next picture, “Hell’s Angels,” for Howard Hughes, lasted three years. He says they thought they would never finish it, but the pay was excel lent, and no one seemed to worry. In 1930 and ’31, Elmer shot two Frank Capra pictures, “Flight” and _ “Dirigible.” “Flight” was the first air film with dialogue aloft and “Dirigible’ he remembers as one of the most dangerous pictures of his experience. Howard Hawks’ second air film, the original “Dawn Patrol” came -next, followed by “The White Sister,” with Ronald Colman and Lillian Gish, and Hawks’ third air picture, “Today We Live,” starring Gary Cooper and Joan Crawford. Then came Capra’s “Lost Horizon,” “Devil Dogs of the Air,” with Pat O’Brien and James Cagney, and “West Point of the Air.” Dyer then went to Europe for a vacation, but instead made three pictures abroad?*“A Yank At Oxford,” “Port‘’ of Seven Seas” and “Shadow § of:” the Wings,” the latter consuming four months with*‘the RAF. Back home, Dyer shot Warner Bros.’ “Wings of the Navy” with George Brent and Olivia de Havilland; “Only Angels Have Wings,”’ his fourth for Howard Hawks; “I Wanted Wings,” “Flight Command,” “The Bride Came C.O.D.,” “Dive Bomber,” “Captains of the Clouds” and now “Air Force.” On U.S.S. Saratoga Charley Marshall, who’s been shooting pictures in the clouds since 1928, began with “The Flying Fleet,” starring Ramon Navarro, Ralph Graves and Anita Page. His next assignment, “Hell Divers,” starring Clark Gable, called for a 12week cruise on the carrier “Saratoga.”’ This was the first movie showing a dive bombing. Marshall began grinding his camera at 12,000 feet, reaching a speed of 305 miles an hour before the pull-out. He did his work standing up in an open cockpit, and the pull-out threw -him -and his equipment to the’ floor of the plane in one tangled: ness. For “Hell Below,” Marshall travelled to Honolulu with a large cast, including Walter Huston, Robert Montgoniery and Maureen O’Sullivan. For this picture he shot both in the air and, from submarines, beneath Charley Marshall Has Been Doing It Since 1928 the sea. Marshall’s closest brush with death was during filming of “West Point of the Air” at Randolph Field. The ship in which he rode was supposed to dive behind a fast formation of 48 planes. The pilot missed his timing, however, and the camera plane dove through the formation. They got through by inches, but were 75 feet from the ground before the pilot could level off. Another time, Marshall’s pilot took off with 65-pound magnesium bombs tied to the undercarriage. While the plane was still on the runway, one of the bombs ignited and Marshall jumped though the plane was doing 50 mile an hour. The pilot was right after him, and both saw the plane burn to a cinder, camera equipment and all.