Bright Lights (Warner Bros.) (1930)

FILMED ENTIRELY IN TECHNICOLOR. Pe a wea THIS BOX-OFFICE INFORMATION TO THE WORLD! SCREEN SOON TO SUPPLY STAGE WITH STORIES SCREEN INNOVATION So Claims foe ky Studio Scenarist and Author of “Bright Lights” (Feature) Miracles still happen and scenarios are still being bought in Hollywood. Rarer than that, their authors become high-salaried writers for the movies. Humphrey Pearson is Exhibit A. The young advertising expert from New York who wrote “On With the Show” and First National’s big “special,” “Bright Lights,”’ which is coming to the es ee eo @ Theatre with Doro ee | thy Mackaill, Frank Fay, Noah Beery, Daphne Pollard, James Murray and-other notables of¢ the stage and screen, wrote a scenario and had it accepted! Moreover, it proved a great success aS a talkie during its season, so Pearson found himself ‘overnight” a high-salaried scenarist on the studio staff. Originally the story was intended for a stage play, and its original title was “‘Shoestrings.” Always interested in the theatre, Pearson had made many professional friends in New York, and had studied as an amateur the problems of play construction. When a nervous breakdown forced him to abandon his profession of advertising, and to come to California to recuperate, he wrote the play, and knowing of no one to submit it to immediately as a play, tried it out on the movies. A candid scenario editor received Pearson, heard what he had to say of the merits of his story, and then heartlessly tossed it to a reader to “so through the usual mill.” He also told the young author there was little hope for his brain-child. “Tt’s probably lousy,” he _ remarked. ‘Practically all of them are, because everyone in America thinks he or she can write scenarios. But of course we’ll read it. ~ Tf the reading staff finds anything in it, I’ll read it,.and if I pass it it will go to the executives; it then will have a good chance. Not one script in ten thousand passes the reading department, however.” Pearson thought that was the end of his career as a scenarist, right where it had begun. A week later he got a ring on the telephone, He went to the studio, sold his ’script, and was given a job on the scenario staff helping adapt it to talking pictures. “Shoestrings” became “On with the Show,” one of the most successful of the back-stage talkie plots. Pearson hails from Ohio, and he attended the state university. He finished the college in time to join the navy during the world war, and got his start as something of a business notable by organizing the sale of Liberty Bonds through the school systems in his state, raising many times the required quota. He went to Washington on the same sort of job, and again succeeded beyond all expectations. He then turned to advertising agency work, starting in Columbus, Ohio. By the end of one year he was $35,000 in debt, which was a feat in itself. During several years that followed all the many accounts secured failed, but on the strength of his personal work in the agency, he was able to “sell himself” to the big Criterion Advertising Agency of New York as vice-president. During his stay in New York Pearson studied the theatre, and took a great interest in its problems. He experimented even at DOROTHY MACKAILL ‘DISCOVERED’ AGAIN Dorothy Mackaill, a popular featured actress on the screen for several years, was “discovered” all over again in “Bright Lights,” First National’s all-technicolor melodrama, coming to the . Theatre. instance, it was discovered For that— She voice. She could dance well and do the hula like nobody’s business. had an excellent singing She looked more beautiful than ever in Technicolor. She was a dramatic actress of the highest ability. She had taken a place along with only one or two featured or starring actresses of the silent screen who had made good in the lead of a musical production. “Bright Lights” is Miss Mackaill’s first musical, as well as technicolor, picture. Frank Fay appears opposite her, with Noah Beery, Daphne Pollard, James Murray, and others in the cast. Michael Curtiz directed. producing plays, in an ce ina anducsa a r wav. re down and he was sent to California to recover it, his attention turned to playwriting. “Bright Lights” was written to give Dorothy Mackaill, formerly of the London Hippodrome, the Folies Bergere and the Ziegfeld Follies, a chance to sing and dance in a talking picture. At the same time a tense dramatic plot and interesting characterizations were needed. The producers turned to the author of “On With the Show” with their problem. Pearson had already conceived a plot which he thought might exact ly fit this need. It dealt with a tense twenty-four hours of present time, with the heroine as a Follies queen in New York City, yet showing in a novel way her rise from a low dive in Africa through many exotic and sordid experiences to her present place. While her real life is being played in retrospects, she lies to reporters who want to write up her marriage to a rich young man. At the same time her past is about to claim her, and a love story unique in screen interpretations of life to date has its culmination as a powerful surprise punch. “IT think that there is so much more one can do on the talking screen, SO Many more ways of telling a story, that it will shortly become the most important vehicle for drama,” Pearson declares. “I have a passion for the flesh-andblood stage, which has always fascinated me. Bright | Lignts/| Cut No. 20. Cut 40c. Mat 10c MUSICAL MELODRAMA Dorothy Mackaill sekail Featured in “Bright Lights,” First “Special” Since “Barker.” (Advance News) Michael Curtiz, the tall Hungarian who two years ago couldn’t speak English, is responsible for one of the most glamorous movie melodramas since the screen went musical and Technicolor. He is the director of “Bright Lights,” First National’s all-color musical production with Dorothy Mackaill and Frank Fay, and which opens at the eee wee eee eee AU LLG «eee ereeeeneves Theatre. Curtiz came to Hollywood in 1928 unknown except for an excellent reputation as a European film director. He learned the language of Hollywood while making “Noah’s Ark,’ and _ incidentally made his reputation as a director of American films. “Bright Lights” was his initial picture for First National. This Vitaphone production is the drama of a hula dancer’s rise to fame. It is packed with redblooded and often primitive melodrama as the story unfolds in retrospect during a newspaper interview. Incidental music and dancing on some of the most lavish stage settings ever constructed add lighter moments to the tense plot. It is one of the screen’s initial melodramas and Miss Mackaill’s first. Curtiz has injected in “Bright Lights” the spectacular quality of his ‘“Noah’s Ark’; the human feeling of his “Mammy”; the drama of “Hearts in Exile’; and the beauty of “Under a Texas Moon.” The director was born in Budapest and educated there at the Royal Academy oi and Art. He was an actor and director at the Royal Hungarian Theatre and directed pictures for fourteen years in Budapest, Vienna, Berlin, Paris and. Copenhagen. He is 6 feet tall. Frank Fay appears opposite Miss Mackaill in “Bright Lights.” He was leading man in “Under a Texas Moon.” Noah Beery, Daphne Pollard, James Murray, Tom Dugan, Inez Courtney, Frank McHugh, Edmund Breese and Eddie Nugent are prominent in the lengthy cast. TOM-TOM PLAYING IS TRICKY ART (Advance Reader) Wanted, one good tom-tom player. This was the announcement sent oat by First National during the filming of “Brights Lights,” coming tO=the.2 Theatre, and it took two weeks to find such a “musician.” His name was Michael Plante and he acquired his strange accomplishment while serving with a British regiment in Africa. The player of the savages’ drum was needed for a scene in the alltechnicolor and Vitaphone musical melodrama, which features Dorothy Mackaill and Frank Fay. LEarly parts of the story are laid in an African dive, where Miss Mackaill does the hula dance to the slow beats of the tom-tom. Only a person who has been taught by the natives can play the drum with the slow, measured rhythm that is said to affect emotions. of savages and white men alike, according to Michael Curtiz, director of “Bright Lights.” In the cast of this lavish and melodramatic super film are Noah Beery, Daphne Pollard, James Murtay, Tom Dugan, Inez Courtney, Frank McHugh, Edmund Breese, Eddie Nugent, and many other prominent players. The story is an original by Humphrey Pearson. Mhanatra AliTavus er ey THE HOME OF THEE VETAPHONE Comfortably Refrigerated “Take me_ back dives, bright lights have blinded me to the one thing that really matters—your love. LIGHTS Story by Humphrey Pearson Filmed in T echni COLOR A "we NATIONAL i ADHONE ass Cut No. 2. Cut 40c. Mat 10c to the Wally. Big-time 99 with DorRoTHY MACKAILL FRANK FAY NOAH BEERY James Murray Inez Courtney Directed by MICHAEL CourTIZz } XC ON) "ee ey the Greatest of VUWitw wy Casts in One of the Greatest of Dramas REALTOR NEXT JOB FOR SCREEN STAR (Current Reader—Vitaphone) If the film producers should no longer beckon to Dorothy Mackaill with contracts, the blonde star would turn her mind and the money she has saved to real estate. In an interview recently, the actress, who is now co-featured with Frank Fay in “Bright Lights,” First National’s all-technicolor musical picture at the ...... Theatre, said this of herself if she should leave the screen. “Laugh if you like, but down behind all the more adventurous blood in me is a liking for real estate development. I’d love to be selling people beautiful tracts of land down near the sea; then, too, I’d like to design, or help them design, beautiful homes to go with these lots and estates. “The first thing I would do if I were no longer in pictures would be to organize a company to build a beautiful community—perhaps like Monte Carlo-——in the tropical section of Mexico. I know it would pay, as Agua Caliente does now, and I would have a lot of fun doing Itc Dorothy’s entry in the real estate business must necessarily be postponed a long time. Her tremendous popularity as lLouanne, the hula dancer, in “Bright Lights” will keep her on the screen for some time to come, it is expected. This was her initial singing and dancing role. Michael Curtiz directed the melodrama. j | -Blue.” VARIED TUNES FOR DIFFERENT LOGALES IN “BRIGHT LIGHTS” “Bright Lights,” Dorothy Mackaill’s newest picture coming to the Theatre on around the world. It shows, in flashback, scenes of a girl’s rise in life from the lowest dives in the diamond camps of Africa to Park Avenue life in New York. Unique in today’s pictures in that this life story has its own type of music to symbolize and mark each upward step of the girl as she goes from one episode in her life to another. Nine famous song writers, each doing his specialty, were required to write.this incidental music. : Some of the new tunes that these writers turned out and that Miss Mackaill is going to make popular in “Bright Lights” are: “Pin Crazy: About Cannibal Love,” “Wall Street,” “A’ Man About Town,” “Rubbernecking Around,” “Congo,” and “Nobody Cares If I’m Among the authors of these songs were: Magidson, Washington & Cleary; Clarke and Akst; Ray Perkins and Joe Burke; Al Bryan and Eddie Ward. Frank Fay, Noah Beery, James Murray, Daphne Pollard, Tom Du© gan, and other favorites play dramatic or comedy parts in “Bright Lights.” The picture is filmed en tirely in Technicolor, and Michael Curtiz directed it. ‘Page Eleven