Blessed Event (Warner Bros.) (1932)

USE THESE CUTS IN YOUR PROGRAMS AND FOR A TEASER AD CAMPAIGN Out No.29 Cut20c Mat &e Peep through the keyholes of your favorite celebrities with the world’s most famous keyhole peeper. See “Blessed Event.” Cut No.27 Out20c Mat Se What a ‘‘little accident’’ he turned out to be! Get the low-down on the private life of the man who abolished privacy. See “Blessed Event.’’ Cut No.28 Out20c Mat 5e How does America’s favorite column ist get his scandal? Learn his methods of dishing the dirt. See “Blessed Event.” Cut No.80 Cut20c Mat de He’s years ahead of cupid and months ahead of the stork! Get the latest scandal straight from the shock market. See “Blessed Event.” Vitaphone's A Great Trailer The official Vitaphone trailer on this picture is just about the finest ticket-selling agency you can use. It is easily one of the most intriguing advertis ing mediums ever gotten up. With your screen as your most valuable adver tising space, you owe it to yourself to use it to the best advantage. BE SURE TO USE THE VITA PHONE TRAILER IN YOUR OWN AND ALL AFFILIATED HOUSES FOR ABOUT THREE WEEKS BEFORE YOUR PLAY DATE. Special Feature Story Note to Exhibitors:—We are giving you this extra fine story on Dick Powell because he is a positive sensation in this picture. Once the picture opens you are sure to be besieged by requests for some more Dick Powell publicity material. Hollywood Hasn’t Spoiled Dick Powell, Screen ‘Find’ Florence Fisher Parry, star writer of the Pittsburgh Press and famous throughout the Eastern part of the country for her daily column, discovered that Dick Powell, the new screen ‘‘find”’ whose first picture work in ‘‘Blessed Event,’’ the Warner Bros.’ picture now playing at the ........ Sead san ae Theatre, catapulted him to film fame and fortune, remains the same ‘‘regular,’’ ‘‘hometown’’ fellow he always was, when she recently made a Hollywood trip for her newspaper. Miss Parry interviewed Powell, who for three years was master of ceremonies at the elaborate, de luxe Stanley Theatre in Pittsburgh, while she was in Hollywood. She found Dick still amazed at the great good fortune he had had, a fortune which brings him into national prominence with the release of the picture. Dick continues to be amazed that everybody in Hollywood circles thinks he did such an excellent job in a featured role the first time he appeared before the sometimes-fatal cameras. He persists in saying ‘‘I didn’t do much,’’ exemplifying the same modesty and wholesome charm with which during his three Pittsburgh years, he captivated audiences. ‘¢T met Dick on the very day his father and mother had come on to stay with him,’’ Miss Parry wrote in the Pittsburgh Press, ‘‘and he was all excited, getting them ‘fixed.’ He’d gotten a sweet home for the three of them; not ‘Hollywood’ but real. A place in which they could be comfortable as well as proud of what their son is doing. And if you could have seen Dick’s eyes as he told me of their delight with ‘everything,’ you’d know it was going to take more pressure than even Hollywood could yield, to change that boy, or spoil him, or take away his natural clean charm. ‘¢We went over to the Ambassa dor’s Cocoanut Grove for dinner, and and sat at a side table wavuuy wwe ‘stars’ come in, pressing their way through the aisles of staring visitors. Dick seemed younger, more a boy, in this sophisticated setting, than I had ever seen him in Pittsburgh. He is very brown and ruefully admitted that he had taken on 20 pounds out here, sleeping and eating and playing and waiting for his new picture to start. Loves Hollywood “*He loves it here; he’s busy taking in the incredible scene and making it his, without letting it spoil him. He admitted a certain uneasiness over his first work in ‘Blessed Event,’ which he hadn’t seen when I first saw him. But since then he HAS seen it, and he knows that far from being ‘awful’ he’s a genuine hit. He HAS to know it, although he says he simply can’t believe it. ‘The part’s so small! I haven’t anything to do’. As a matter of fact, he sings four songs, beautifully, and gives out a smile and personality that will quickly place him among the coming juveniles of the screen. When ‘Blessed Event’ is released Dick Powell will be doing no more sitting around, waiting. His talents will be wanted for a dozen pictures calling for a boy whose face is unspoiled, whose smile is radiating, and whose voice records flawlessly. Is Genuinely Happy ‘‘For there aren’t many boys like Dick out here, and Hollywood has need of them. You see there are mil LEE TRACY:—‘‘Big Time,’’ ‘‘Lilliom,’’ ‘‘Born Reckless,’’ ‘‘She Got What She Wanted,’’ ‘‘Strange Love of Molly Louvain,’’ ‘‘ Love Is a Racket,’’ ‘‘Doctor X.?? | MARY BRIAN:—‘The Royal Family,’? ‘‘The Runaround,’’ ‘‘The Front Page,’’ ‘‘Homicide Squad,’’ ‘It’s Tough to Be Famous.’’ RUTH DONNELLY:—‘‘The Spider,’? ‘The Rainbow Trail,’’ ‘“Transatlantic,’’ ‘‘Jewel Robbery.’? NED SPARKS: — ‘‘Kept Husbands,’’ ‘‘The Secret Call,’’ ‘‘Corsair,’’? ‘‘The Miracle Man,’’ ‘‘Big City Blues.’’ EMMA DUNN:—‘Too Young to Marry,’’ ‘‘Under Eighteen,’’ ‘‘It’s Tough to be Famous.’’ SCREEN RECORDS lions of movie-goers, all over the world, who care to see wholesomeness in a juvenile’s face. You can’t be with him without feeling an essential health about him, a rightness, a realness. He’s genuinely happy, naturally clean. His eyes are clear and straight and young. And he can bring an eagerness and wholesome charm to the juvenile roles assigned him which the cameras will gratefully catch up. ‘There are enough young sheiks out here, too many boys with a menacing, knowledgeful smile and heavylidded eyes. There are too many boys who come out here and get caught up in the net of women’s smiles, go ‘party,’ try to ‘do’ a Hollywood act —and lose their youth’s firm bloom. The very thing that made them an asset to their producers, their freshness and their unspoiled charm, fades under the soft disentegrating forces surrounding them. I do not believe that this will happen to Dick Powell. He strikes me as being altogether sound. First Tests Were Terrible ‘He told me how terrible his first tests were, when he was tried out for ‘Crooner,’ and lost to David Manners. ‘I looked like nothing human,’ he said, ‘I don’t know what they did to me with make-up and lights and photography, but when I saw that test I thought I’d die. Later, someone from Warners happened to pass won) Dt424,b Vee oot & AULD ee atu pwr Lb ULL the stage and afterwards met me. He had seen that terrible test and couldn’t believe I was the boy who made it. So he ordered another test, under better technical conditions. We took a day to do it, although the actual shooting of the test was only about five minutes. This time it caught on. I looked as least human. Scared? Of course, I was. Anyone who says he isn’t nervous in a test is—well, there’s no such person! Of course when it came to the singing I was sure of my ground. But it’s all like a dream, my making the ‘grade’.?’ Miss Parry believes that Powell’s success is due in great part to this sense of humility which excludes any possibility of losing that essential freshness which characterizes Powell’s work in ‘‘Blessed Event,’’? in which he plays with such popular established players as Lee Tracy and Mary Brian. The famous writer, after close contact with Powell and his family in Hollywood, is confident that ‘‘there’s a big place for him.’’ Her opinion represents the consensus of the thousands who are seeing ‘Blessed Event’’ in theatres throughout the country, and hailing it as the year’s greatest comedy, thanks to the performances of Powell, Tracy and Miss Brian. ‘‘Blessed Event’? is the story of a columnist who becomes involved in a rapid-fire round of events which furuish laugh after laugh and a love story of a type rarely seen on the screen. DICK POWELL:—Master of Ceremonies at Pittsburgh Stanley theatre. WALTER WALKER:—‘‘ Tomorrow and Tomorrow,’’ ‘‘The Mouthpiece,’’ ‘‘Rebound,’’ ‘‘The Rich Are Always With Us,’’ ‘‘Life Begins,’’ ‘‘Two Against the World.’’ FRANK McHUGH: — ‘‘Corsair,’’ ‘Union Depot,’’ ‘‘ High Pressure, ’’ ‘*Millie,?’? ‘*The Crowd Roars,’’ ‘“The Dark Horse,’’ ‘‘One Way Passage,’’ ‘‘Life Begins.?’ RUTH HALL:—‘‘Local Boy Makes Good,’’ ‘‘Union Depot,’’ ‘‘ Heart of New York,’’ ‘‘Miss Pinkerton,’’? ‘‘A Fool’s Advice,’’ ‘One Way Passage,’’ ‘‘Ride Him, Cowboy.’? Page Fifteen