Central Park (Warner Bros.) (1932)

INTEREST-BUILDING FEATURES! Advance Feature Advance Feature Screen Achieves Realism With Players Who Have Lived Story Joan Blondell, Heroine of ‘‘Central Park,’’ Was Born Opposite Park and Has Known Privation A world over-supply of actors and actresses has brought pictures to the point where, with the help of a little imagination, you can be pretty sure the players you see have at least approximated the experience they live in the screen story which unrolls before you. So when First National made ‘‘Central Park,’’ the picture | SPECIAL PUBLICITY ART | Brena Theatre’s current hit, “Central Park.” Wallace Ford and Guy Kibbee, are seen in supporting roles in the film by Ward Morehouse, noted New York columnist. Cut No.9 Cut 30c¢ Mat roc "ST DECI renee er Aor and looked about for a girl who could portray convincingly the role of a _ girl hungry and friendless in a big city’s amusement square, they thought first of Joan Blondell. Joan has had enough adventures in her short twenty-two years to last most people a lifetime. Being hungry and alone in a park just doesn’t begin to tell her story. She has spent every one of her twenty-two birthdays in a different city—including such unrelated spots as New York City, Berlin, Germany, Vancouver, B. C., London, England, Paris, France, Christchurch, New Zealand and Rockaway Beach, Long Island. Playing at Her Birthplace She was born at 96th Street and Central Park West, at two minutes to midnight. Twenty-two years later, she was playing in her latest motion picture production not three hundred feet from her birthplace. Between those two events, however, she had managed to cram in a lot of what is known as living. The daughter of Edward Blondell, of The Blondells, vaudeville troupers, who trace their beginnings to the Blondell who went with Richard Coeur de Lion to the Crusades, she began her theatrical career in her youngest years, and often represented an illegitimate child before she could know the meaning of that word—or any other. She has been a precocious stage youngster, a schoolgirl, a ribbon clerk, a circulating library helper, a@ circus hand, a chorine, and is at present one of the best known einema actresses in the world. She has lived on the bounty of the land, when her family were in luck, and when they weren’t, she has starved Page Six with them until even the thought of food made her go weak all over. She has called hansom cabs and swanky taxis just for rides around the corner to a restaurant, and she has walked the pavement of the metropolis until her feet and the sidewalk between them had beaten her shoes to a pulp, looking for a job. f Pokes Her Memory In “Central Park,” playing with Wally Ford, she is one of two waifs who forage for food in New York’s big park, and who connect, finally, with a flourishing hot dog stand. Joan says the part was just too easy. “All I had to do was poke my memory a little,” she said. “The rest just came.” But, just as in the picture, she enjoyed the transition from dire want to comparative abundance. “Father didn’t like to keep money when we made it,” said Joan, “so we generally spent it on a swell apartment or hotel suite.” So Joan Blondell is quite familiar with that part of the picture which calls for a stranded actress who is doing some enforced dieting. She played it in real life before the moviemakers even thought of it, The picture is a modern romance which starts in the big city park, and blossoms in twenty-four hours of the most thrilling and exciting episodes imaginable, including a panic started by an escaped lion. It is taken from the story by Ward Morehouse, the Broadway columnist and adapted by Mr. Morehouse and Earl Baldwin. Besides the peppy Joan Blondell and Wallace Ford, there is an excellent supporting cast which ineludes Guy Kibbee, Patricia Ellis, Henry B. Walthall, Tully Marshall, Spencer Charters, Holmes Herbert and DeWitt Jennings. It was directed by John Adolfi. Wallace Ford Finds Movies “Soft” After Stage Grind ‘*Pictures are soft!’’ The verdict expressed above, in no mistakeable terms, is that of Wallace Ford, the sandy-haired and freckled young actor who was chosen to play opposite Joan Blondell in ‘‘Central Park,’’ a: First National picture, which will open at the ................. Theatre on So Se Se He was chosen after most of the juveniles of Hollywood had been combed over for someone who could hold up his end with the popular and capable Miss Blondell. Ford drew a contract from one of the ‘largest studios before he had been in Hollywood a week. It is pretty certain that if he wants to, he can keep that contract for a long number of years. And the reason for that is simple. He’s grateful. And willing to do what he’s told. “They kick,’ he said, referring to some of the other players who had been mentioned as being dissatisfied with pictures, “because they have to work one night. In the theatre we worked every night. Finally, after years of effort, we got Sundays off. What’s a night? Yll work as many nights as they like. I like to work.” 15 Pictures in 9 Months In nine months he has done fifteen pictures. That averages almost two a month. And it takes more than a month to finish a single picture! He likes to work. And that trait can be traced back to the famous Dr. Bernardo’s Home in London. Not far from where Charlie Chaplin played as a ragged ~-urchin, Ford was an orphan in one of the most famous orphanages in the world. He had never known ' either his father or his mother. He learned years later, from a priest who spent eight years running dv..u the information for him, that his father was Irish ‘and his mother wre 7 — wee SI Ge dc that. a At nve or six or seven, he was packed forlornly off to Canada to be adopted by a Manitoba wheat farmer. He didn’t like farming and ran away to join Theodore Roberts’ stock company in Winnipeg. That is, he joined the company when he could. He was eleven, and jobs for boys of eleven in the company were few and far between. Other times he worked at what he could, errands, or shining shoes, or washing dishes or whatever came his way. Learned to Like Theatre He didn’t particularly like the theatre. But it was warmer than most places, the actors were kindhearted, and food was plentiful. Gradually, as he worked into bits and then into parts, he learned to like it. He has been twenty years on the stage, and has just turned thirty-two. His first real part was as Little Lord Fauntleroy with the Winnipeg company under the direction of Wilson Hummel, now a Warner Bros. player known as Clarence Wilson. Ford hopes to meet him now that both are on the same lot. Wilson was one of the best friends he ever had; he gave him his first real interest in the theatre. Since that first part, he has been on boat shows, he has been with repertory shows, he has been a singer in a saloon, he has been a hoofer, a ham actor, juveniles and characters — and he ended, at last, on WALLACE FORD & PS ES He’s teamed with Joan Blondell in “Central Park’? by First National, which opens at the ___.___.__-_____Theatre next ______....____._.. Cut No.2 Cutrsc Mat 5c Broadway, where he played the leads in some of the biggest hits of the past five or ten years. His one thought, of course, is movies, because they're “soft.” But also because he likes them, likes the —_ — people who work in them, likes the hours, likes the parts given him, likes Hollywood. How ean you beat anyone like that? Hollywood Likes Him And Hollywood and pictures aren’t trying to beat Wallace Ford. They like him, too. They’re getting more and more anxious to have him in better roles. Finally, when he has received the recognition he knows he deserves, he wants to play character-juveniles. Straight juveniles are all right, but he likes a dash of humor with the part, or a bit of pathos — something that calls for a little effort, a little initiative on his part. It’s all. right doing what: you’re told. He doesn’t mind that. He likes to get the girl and be a hero in the end, after a wild and melodramatic adventure as in “Central Park,” but not too often and not for too long, if it robs him of the chance to color the part with the human and humorous or sad things he’s learned about acting and about life in that twenty years of trouping. ; ; “Central Park,” which was written for the screen by Ward Morehouse, the noted columnist, and Earl Baldwin, has a strong cast of players in support of Miss Blondell and Ford, including Guy Kibbee, Patricia Ellis, Henry B. Walthall, Charles Sellon and Spencer Charters. It was directed by John Adolfi. HELP US TO HELP YOU BY SENDING US YOUR CAMPAIGN Exhibitors are urged to send us their campaigns in order that we may he able to pass along the many splendid ideas put into execution on every picture. Exceptional examples of real showmanship will be passed along, not only to other exhibitors, but also to the Trade Paper for publica tion and comment. Never before has the motion picture business been in greater need of real worthwhile ideas. By pulling together—by interchanging exploitation ideas, exhibitors and producers will be bound to derive much mutual benefit. Address Your Campaign and Your Suggestions and Ideas to Director of Exploitation, WARNER BROS. PICTURES, Inc. 321 West 44th Street, New York City