Central Airport (Warner Bros.) (1933)

FEATURE STORIES — SHORTS (Advance Feature) Peace Time Flying Better Aid to Aviation Than War 99 “Central Airport, Starring Dick Barthelmess Dramatizes Colorful Life of Today’s Pilots S the science of aviation developed more by peace or by war? There have been contenders aplenty for the latter theory —to the effect that only in the heat and tension of war-time flying were real advancements made in the art and science of flying with heavier-than-air machines. This theory, however, has some serious objectors among the little group of air minded men who worked on Richard Barthelmess’ latest First National production, ‘‘Central Airport,’’ which opens at the Chief among them, perhaps, Wellman’s war-time experiences Theatre. is William Wellman, director. read like a tale from Arabian Nights. He went up to the front with only twenty-two hours of achial= tisane-expericice ins thea. He hadn’t been up ten minutes at the front, before he was driven to the earth by an experienced boche, who strafed Wellman’s landed plane and left the young pilot for dying. Director a War Flyer He left the front, having been invalided home because of wounds, to teach in the aviation camps, knowing very little of what flying was all about. Since the war, however, he has learned a great deal about it from actual experience with flying of every sort. He was the director of several of the most spectacular flying pictures, including ‘‘'Wings’’ and ‘‘Young Eagles,’’ and he learned about flying from them. William (Wild Bill) Dodson, is another member of the company of **Central Airport’’ who ean give able testimony to the real help peace-time flying has been to aviation. A parachute jumper with over four hundred jumps to his credit, Bill points out that only since the war has any. deyelopment in ’chute making and jumpin» come, 5 Une Warr llrawnhyer aaa seidom knew how to use it. And even | if he knew how to use it, as often as not it did little good. The thing would fail to -work. A gathering of ’chute men after the war developed the present parachute, utilizing all the good points of the parachutes then in existence. It is noteworthy that this chute has changed but little since its perfection. Dodson has been using the same type of parachute for ten years. Colonel Roscoe Turner’s recent New York to Los Angeles flight, in which he broke all records, traveling faster than man has ever traveled ADVANCE Sally Eilers Is 33rd | Barthelmess Leading Lady Sally Eilers, who plays opposite Richard Barthelmess in the First National picture, “Central Airport,” which opens at the on , is his thirty-third leading lady. With a few exceptions Barthelmess has a new feminine lead with each picture. Entire Carnival Bought Solely To Be Wrecked First National studio purchased a complete carnival show just to smash it up for Richard Barthelmess’ latest picture “Central Airport,” which opens at the..........00.00.... theatre It was the. Great World’s. Carnival, which had been touring Southern California. The carnival was moved bag and _ baggage to Al Wilson’s Airport in North Hollywood. There a_ wild plane taxied through it, demolishing the Ferris wheel, zulu huts, merrygo-rounds and a score of stands. on 1 and durability, before over the same space going in the same direction, was the result of his own peace time flying during the past fifteen years. | Great Advances | He conservatively estimates that flying, both as to safety and speed has advanced during the past ten years more than it possibly could have during any ten years of ‘war. Paul Mantz, flyer loops intrepid young stunt and hurdles his planes through stunts that war-time flyers | Yet more would have considered suicide. Paul doesn’t consider them than part of the day’s work. He points out, incidentally, that most of the development of peace time planes, including army pursuits, bombers, and others, has been the direct result of peace time commercial flying—the air mail, the air transport and sport planes. Something of this drama is included in ‘‘Central Airport,’’ whose heroes are not the usual army and Weed dL Th nore ime flying what iv as ~0aay— a science, a business, a pastime and a pleasure which has its thousands of adherents all over the world, where. once it had its tens. Yet they daily risk their lives just as the war time aviators did at the front. Richard Barthelmess has the role of an air pilot, while Sally Eilers plays opposite to him as a _ parachute jumper. Others in the cast include Tom Brown, Glenda Farrell, Harold Huber, Grant Mitchell, James Murray and Claire MeDowell. The screen play by Rian James and James Seymour is based on the story ‘“Hawk’s Mate’? by Jack Moffitt. SHORTS Barthelmess Heroine Is Licensed Air Pilot Sally Hilers, who plays the part of a parachute jumper sweetheart to Richard Barthelmess in his new First National picture, “Central Airport,” which comes to the..2....0...0.0.... theatre: tit saoi5 cis , is a licensed air pilot, having passed the test more than a year ago. She was taught to fly by her husband, Hoot Gibson, who has three planes. Sally frequently takes out a plane for a solo flight. War Time Ace Directed “Central Airport” Film William Wellman, who directed Richard Barthelmess’ new picture for First National, “Central Airport,” which “comes ~to--the3 isso theatre on , is a war time ace. He joined the Lafayette Eseradrille before America entered the war and was invalided home by the French Goverment because of wounds. Later he joined the American air force as a flying instructor. SHORT ADVANCE NOTES FOR PROGRAMS Tom Brown, supporting Dick Barthelmess in First National’s ‘‘ Central Airport’’ has learned by exper — that there’s safety in numbers. now goes out with at least seven gir a a week. Dick Barthelmess, coming soon in ‘“Central Airport,’’ is supported by | Sally Kilers. This is the first time these two sereen favorites have appeared together. (Current Feature ) Movie Studio Turns Its Lake Into Raging Ocean Private Waterfront at First National Sees Lots of Action as “Central Airport” Is Filmed sees river boats tow, RICHARD BARTHELMESS and SALLY EILERS, leading figures in First National’s romance of the Strand hit. Cut 30c Out No. 6 RK was water again along the China Basin. A city block of blackened piles had little wavelets lapping at their exposed shanks once more. The Trixy and the Dolly and the Famous were all floating again, aS were divers,dories and rowboats, a flat barge such as three or four floats of the ordinary sort and much odd lumber and chips, an old tin bath-tub and other odds and ends that had been lying high and dry for many months. The lake was last filled for Douglas Fairbanks, Jr’s. picture, “It’s Tough To Be Famous,” at which time the Mayor’s tug was tied to the disguised front of a doge’s palace. There have been, at various times, Chinese pagodas, Japanese houses, a fishing wharf and a pleasure pier built around the lake, but only odd remnants of these remain. Motion picture sets go into desuetude almost immediately after they have been used, and California wind and rain and sun do the rest. The “lake” itself isn’t large, nor again is it small. It measures about five to six hundred feet in length, is three hundred and fifty feet wide at its widest point, which is along the cement beach at its west end, and about two hundred and fifty feet wide at its narrowest point. It is only about two or three feet deep over most of its expanse, but has | been deepened considerably in the | central portion at various times. | | Lake Becomes Sea | A steam shovel was put to work in it for several days before the filming of the seenes for the Barthelmess picture. A tri-motor plane is a huge structure itself. And in | “Central Airport,” this one had to ibe sunk in the storm which the studio wind and wave machines created. The steam shovel’s hole | must have been somewhere between itwenty and thirty feet deep and to sixty feet across. Then the | lake was filled with water, lights erected, cameras and microphones | set up and the disable plane planted in the middle of the lake. Hours of back-breaking toil—of careful planning by 100 technicians, by supervisors and by the director and the big scene of “Central Airport” was ready to be filmed. It forms the thrilling climax in the picture. Here at this studio lake raged the greatest storm ever filmed while Richard Barthelmess as a heroic flyer rescued the passengers from a_ sinking, storm battered plane foundering in the angry wa air, “Central Airport” the new Mat 10e The steps of the Venetian palaces, and the floats where the | ters of the Caribbean Sea. | war-time flyers of the usual air picdoges’ gondolas embark and disembark their passengers, however, who have made | were also wet, as was a long ‘smooth stretch of cement beau with | cram its backing of Cairfornia sky, or “blue.”? And the tug with which | sey the Mayor of New York greets all incoming celebrities had strangely This picture is an absorbing drama of the air based upon th "Hawk's Mate, wy Moffitt and adapted by Rian James and James Seymour. In the cast ee sat apg Cave. The rowboats, of which there are an assortment, the bathtub and the odds and ends, are all the refuse which any studio “lake” naturally picks up over the course of years. disappeared. It never did have anything but a prow, anyhow—and of course wouldn’t float .. supporting Barthelmess are Sally Eilers, Tom Brown, Glenda Farrell, Harold Huber, Grant Mitchell and James Murray. But perhaps it had better be explained that the expanse of once dry terrain which was wet, and which ineluded such _ ill-assorted neighborhoods as the San Francisco Waterfront, a canal in Venice and a New York Dock, was merely the First National Studio’s “lake” which once again was filled with water for the filming of a scene in which a large tri-motored plane sinks at sea during a terrific wind and rain storm in Richard Barthelmess’ latest picture, “Central Airport,’ which is now showing on the screen of tie a See ee Theatre. The “lake” was built almost before anyone remembers. Oldest members of the technical department recall that there was a sort of hole there when the studio was built, years ago. The hole was filled with water on several occasions when puddles and ponds were needed in certain pictures. Gradually, however, the idea of making it into a lake must have evolved. It has had a cement floor since about 1925. Been There Long Time The Venetian palaces were built for an Olsen and Johnson picture, several years later, called “Sailor Behave.” The waterfront, San Francisco version, was already there, but no one can recall the pictures it was used for prior to the vaudevillian’s comedy. It was used later for Edward G. Robinson’s “The Hatchet Man,” which William Wellman directed. Wellman also directed Barthelmess in “Central Airport.” The original of the Trixy and the Dolly and the Famous, seems also lost in antiquity. They are, respectively, a little cabin cruiser with one ragged broken mast, a little two-masted ketch, and what appears to be a Grand Bank fisherman fallen upon evil days, a wide-bellied, ocean-going craft whose bowsprit has dropped away and whose rotting prow shows yet the lettering “Famous” with withered pride. See Hard Luck Aplenty While Making ‘‘Central Airport” Numerous Bad Breaks Held Up Production Yet Barthelmess Flying Epic Turned Out Perfectly Mary, the First National wardrobe woman, ‘‘is twins.’’ ge | The picture in question was ‘‘Central Airport, ”” starring Richard Barthelmess, now showing at the Theatre, which had, to all appearances, one of the worst starts in the making a picture ever got. It is an outdoor picture, and they started shooting it on the day that a long, hot, dry California Fall gave place to a nasty, wet, gusty winter. But as if that weren’t enough. Many of the scenes are in the air—air stunts, parachute drops, ete——and even when there hadn’t been rain, there had been no sun. Then the stunt girl, Mary Wiggin, who does some of the most hazardous scenes, got sat on by a player weighing nearly two hundred. Then the stunt pilot, Paul Mantz, who flies with Richard Barthelmess, the star, in many of the scenes, cracked up in his plane and went to the hospital with a broken shoulder. | Cost One Plane | A big passenger plane, chartered for a couple of scenes in the picture, miscalculated a landing, flirted with a telegraph pole and a lot of wires, and landed, finally, minus a lot of valuable machinery — but, luckily, with no lives lost. The plane and to be bought and trimotors are expensive. A swift pursuit plane used by x-2. HE only thing we haven’t had on this picture,’’ said of blow torches at all, and the plane went up in smoke. There were a lot of other things. One of the most valuable shots taken in the picture, that of Sally Hilers dropping into a grove of oak trees in a parachute, with amazingly beautiful eloud banks behind her, had to be retaken—and the company had to wait for those particular cloud banks to return. Mary, the wardrobe woman, shook her head sadly at the recollection of all these happenings. “Everything but twins!” she repeated. And, as it happens—despite all the bad breaks that the picture turned out to be one of the finest air pictures ever screened. The story is a glowing romance of the air, which recounts the daring deed of the heroes of peacetime fly Dick in some of his special scenes | ing. had to undergo a painting job in} Among those in the supporting the shops. Someone saw a gadgeticast are Glenda Farrell, Harold which needed fixing and took a blow | Huber, Grant Mitchell, James Murtorch to it. Planes aren’t affinities | ray, Willard Robertson. Page Five