Bureau of Missing Persons (Warner Bros.) (1933)

CURRENT FEATURES A Bette Davis Portrait By Carlisle Jones she WeiIdn’t wear trousers—but she does. Gace she wouldn’t bleach her hair—but she did. She vowed She wore & flannel chest protector as a child. Her eyes are too large and her legs e:...t09 slim, but she photographs like a mil lion dollars. She was born Ruth Elizabeth Bette while she was still a child. She has never seen Charlie Chaplin in person. seen a silent picture. She knows exactly how much money she has in the bank. Bette thinks that luck plays a substantial part in success. She doesn’t believe letters of recommendation. Once she slapped a man—and his surprised look amused her so much she has never repeated the performance. She thinks you can tell a woman’s age by her elbows, has never found a four-leaf clover, doesn’t believe that a centipede really has a hundred legs, is a radio fan but she never listens to Amos ’n’ Andy. She knows a robin’s egg when she sees it, knows the names of trees and of some of the ; BETTE DAVIS stars, but can’t Cut No.1 remember who Cut 15e Mat 5c is the Vice President of the United States, or the second verse of “The Star-Spangled Banner.” Bette is not interested in Mahatma Ghandi’s health, is very curious about the ‘people behind lighted windows, and likes onion soup. The pert young heroine of the First National picture, “Bureau of Missing Persons,” which is now at the . ... Theatre, once won a grocery store raffle. The prize turned out to be a lot in the bankrupt subdivision on which many back taxes had piled up. Bette refused to accept the “prize.” She likes to hear a clock tick and she likes to sit on the floor. She can’t fill a fountain pen without getting ink on her fingers. Afraid of Dark She doesn’t own a parasol, is afraid of the dark, and takes off her shoes first when she undresses for Deig and shortened all that to She has never She likes the smell of fragh bed. paint. Bette doesn’t like to shop in a dime store. She didn’t wear orange blossoms at her wedding. She doesn’t save string. Football excites Bette more than any other sport. She has never owned a horse... has never had the mumps. She never uses a safety pin in place of a button. She doesn’t believe any one is completely happy, least of all, an actress. She likes corn on the cob. She puts perfume on her ears. Bette does not slam doors. She doesn’t like purple. She can bait a fish hook without flinching. Her memory for telephone numbers is remarkable. She doesn’t have any special “telephone” voice. She had to unlearn her Back Bay Boston accent before she could play stage roles. She does not read the solution of a mystery novel before getting to it logically. Bette nearly drowned once. She has never owned a pair of detachable heels. She doesn’t call Pullman porters “George,” or use scented stationery. When a run starts in her stocking, she just lets it run. She has found from experience that nothing she can do will stop it. She doesn’t write poetry, and wouldn’t ask a strange man to help her change a tire. She likes white flowers. She likes to climb mountains. “Ex-Lady” was Miss Davis’ first starring picture. She has played leads opposite George Arliss twice. She has never been shop. She can tell if a piano is slightly out of tune. She has attended auctions but she has never bought anything there. Completely bald heads do not fascinate her. She can’t tell white lies in a pawn very successfully. She plays golf. She drinks tomato juice, tans easily, sets her clocks by the radio and knows a Jersey cow when she sees one. She likes to sleep late Sunday mornings and have breakfast in bed. She has never bought a book from a house-to-house canvasser. Bette can’t read stock market ticker tape. She keeps a scrap book, faints easily, and doesn’t generally catch cold from wet feet. She has never seen a gorilla and she doesn’t like to wear high-heeled “mules.” She follows famous murder cases closely. She has never painted china. Reads Brisbane She likes the sound of wind. She saves theatre progiams, wakes up quickly when called, reads. Arthur Brisbane and would like to Visit Tahiti. She is not economical with electric light. She crawls over—rather than under —a fence, and likes to swing. She doesn’t like to eat at a counter. She once choked on a fishbone. She doesn’t order more than she eats at a restaurant, likes to raid the icebox at night, can talk pig latin expertly and doesn’t eat an apple a day. Bette played a role in an Ibsen play while she had the measles. She can’t do any card tricks, likes home-made jelly, cheese, but dislikes alarm clocks. She doesn’t keep goldfish. Like James Cagney, she has never paid money to see an embalmed whale. She knows the first aid rules for drowning persons, likes to climb mountains, has never ridden in a freight train caboose, and is somewhat superstitious, for she will not walk under a ladder. She doesn’t wear monogramed under-garments. She has never been out of the United States. She can knit, doesn’t favor a sales tax, but knows what it is. Bette has never known a circus freak, or even seen a bull fight. She doesn’t think hard work always pays dividends. She wouldn’t spank a baby if she had one! , She never knew a missing person herself, but she liked playing one in her latest picture, “Bureau of Missing Persons.” She didn’t like all of the characters in the film, but she likes those who played the roles, including Lewis S. Stone, Pat O’Brien, Glenda Farrell, Allen Jenkins, Ruth Donnelly, Hugh Herbert and Alan Dinehart. She also liked the director, Roy Del Ruth, and the screen play writer, Robert Presnell. Pat O’Brien and Bette Davis seen in one of the many thrilling sequences in “Bureau of Missing Persons,” First National’s new hit, which is now playing at the... . Theatre. Cut Neo. 11 Cut 30c Mat 10c Pat O’Brien Finally Gets Role He Has Yearned to Do ambitious actor in Hollywood, says Pat O’Brien. 66 A LL things come to him who waits” is a good motto for an The best proof of it is that Pat is playing the role of Butch Saunders, detective, in the First Missing Persons,” now showing at the . National production, “Bureau of ~ «is: dneatre, Pat O’Brien has always had a flair for police courts, criminal trials and detectives. He had it, he says, before he became an actor on the stage. It began to flourish while he was still in college, and he satisfied it in those days by studying law for two years. After graduation, when Pat found his way on the stage instead of into the practice of law, he kept his eye open for a good, fat detective part. It came to him, finally, in the role of Dan McCorn, the detective of “Broadway,” when the Chicago company was organized for the second year of the play’s run. When Hollywood finally took him away from Broadway, it was not to play his favorite detective part, but the irrepressible reporter of “The Front Page.” “It was a great part and I loved it,’ said Pat, “but from then on I was the newspaper reporter of Hollywood. It’s taken me two years and seventeen pictures to do what I’ve always wanted to do ever since I came here—play a detective, as I’m doing now.” In his current picture his role shows him as a detective transferred from the robbery detail of the police department to the Bureau of Missing Persons because he had been too quick to make arrests and was too fond of using his fists. Bette Davis, Lewis Stone, Allen Jenkins, Ruth Donnelly, Alan Dinehart, Glenda Farrell, Marjorie Gateson and many other capable players of the stage and screen make up the large cast of “Bureau of Missing Persons,” a powerful drama concerning the lives of those thousands who mysteriously disappear. Roy Del Ruth directed the screen play, adapted by Robert Presnell from (a book by Captain John H. Ayres and Carol Bird. 375,000 Persons a Year Reported Missing in U. S. “Bureau of Missing Persons” Is First Movie to Show What Happens When People Disappear the subject for an absorbing motion picture story. The life Pes work, ever an interesting study, has often been made has so much glamour and adventure attached to it that it has HELLO, HELLO! been only natural for movie producers to turn to the workings of the police department for their plots. Various phases of police work have been used for screen material, but for the first time in the history of motion pictures, the work of a little known police bureau has been turned into a movie. First National calls its picture “The Bureau of Missing Persons.” The story is based upon the activities of the Missing Persons’ Bureau which functions in the police department of every American city of any size. Most people have never heard of the Bureau of Missing Persons. Few have any idea of how the Bureau functions. Some idea of the importance of such a bureau in the Police Department of New York City may be gained, however, from the fact that during the last fifteen years it has handled close to 300,000 cases of men, women, boys and girls who have disappeared. For the first time in the history of the motion picture, the activities of this little known branch of police work have been accurately and authoritatively brought to the screen in absorbing dramatic form by First National in “Bureau of Missing Persons,” which opens at the... . Theatre on... . with Bette Davis, Pat O’Brien, Glenda Farrell and Lewis S. Stone playing the featured roles. Page Twenty In the preparation of the story, Robert Presnell, who wrote the screen play, had the active collaboration of Captain John H. Ayres, for fifteen years captain of the Bureau of Missing Persons in New York City and still its head, whose book narrating the activities of this department, “Missing Men,” was recently published. The accuracy of every detail of the picture was in this way assured. Director Roy Del Ruth was enthusiastic about “The Bureau of Missing Persons” as the subject for a screen drama from the moment the idea was broached. “I knew in a general way what the police did concerning disappearance cases,” he said, “but until I began to dig into the story I had no idea of how important, efficient and incessantly busy this unit of police work is. “Have you any notion,” he went on, turning to Lewis Stone, one of the principal players in the picture, “how many people are reported missing each year in New York City alone?” Pat O’Brien, youthful veteran of many stage and screen successes, is seen in a bit of trouble with his “wife,” the irrepressibly pert Glenda Farrell. This is a scene from “Bureau of Missing Persons,’ First National’s hit drama, now playing at the .... Theatre. Cut No. 12 Cut 30c Mat 10c Le esenenrnnennnnnrnennnenenenneneens Stone considered a moment. “Off hand, I should say eight or ten thousand,” he replied. “What’s your guess, Bette?” inquired Roy of Miss Davis. “I haven’t the faintest suspicion of what a reasonable figure would be,” she answered. Del Ruth smiled. “The Bureau of Missing Persons in the New York Police Department handled 27,000 cases in 19382. “By the end of May of this year, they had already dealt with 10,208 cases locally. And the records of the department show that only 2 per cent of the cases of the Bureau of Missing Persons handled have gone unsolved,” he concluded. Both his listeners were frankly dumbfounded. “Taking New York City as a basis,” said Lewis Stone reflectively, “and calculating a population of 8,000,000 for the metropolitan area, that would give a probable total of persons missing each year throughout the country of—let me see—,” the actor reached for a pencil and did some rapid figuring on a sheet of paper—“allow 122,000,000 as the estimated population of the United States, one-fifteenth of which is liying within the metropolitan radius of Greater New York. That would give a probable total of 375,000 persons who disappear every year in all parts of the country. “On the basis of Captain Ayres’ figures that only 2 per cent of the missing persons are not found, there are still 7,500 human beings in the United States who drop from sight every year never to be heard of again. It doesn’t seem possible. “What a fund of unexplored story material and human drama there is in those thousands of missing persons!” said Del Ruth. “I’ve read the details of possibly two or three hundred cases since I began to prepare for this picture. The extraordinary thing about them is the variety among them. Some are sordid and drab; some are gruesome; plenty of them are pathetic; not a few are genuinely full of comedy, but every one of them is deeply, significantly human. There’s enough material there, it seems to me, to keep a score of directors busy for the rest of their lives.” “Bureau of Missing Persons” gives a panoramic view of the human tragedies and comedies that come to the attention of the police. It carries a strong plot with a most unusual romance, involving a police officer and one of the missing women. ‘There is a large and capable cast, which includes, besides Miss Davis, Lewis S. Stone, Pat O’Brien, Glenda Farrell, Allen Jenkins, Ruth Donnelly, Hugh Herbert, Alan Dinehart and Marjorie Gateson.