City for Conquest (Warner Bros.) (1940)

Mat 115—15c ANATOLE LITVAK says that music is the key to tempo in making motion pictures and that a well-made picture naturally falls into a definite musical cadence. He believes that the best directors are those who have a fundamental knowledge and feeling for music. 'Mayerling,’ which Litvak directed in France and which has scored a tremendous success in America as well as in Europe, was made in waltz time, says Litvak. "A story of that type, definitely dated and against the romantic background of Vienna,” he explains, "naturally falls into three-four tempo. Other pictures might be likened to symphonies, with a smooth blending of various themes." Mr. Litvak, born in Russia in 1902, has nothing of the traditional Muscovite in his manner or in his method of direction, except when the topic of comedy arises in the abstract. Then his smile vanishes; the twinkle fades from his eye; and his brow takes on the pale cast of thought. Comedy, he says, is a serious matter. While not a professional musician. Anatole Litvak has a deep knowledge and love of music. He plays the piano but only for his own amusement. Among his Warner pictures are "Tovarich," "The Sisters," "The Amazing Dr. Clitterhouse,” "All This, and Heaven Too" and "Castle on the Hudson." His latest is "City For Conquest.” Squeaks Aid McHugh In Comic Role Frank McHugh, playing “Muttface,” the good-natured but unthinking pal of Jimmy Cagney in Warner Bros.’ “City For Conquest,’ now at the Strand, revealed that one of Hollywood’s unusual hobbies had helped him in that: ad many other roles. McHugh’s hobby is collecting squeaky shoes. He wears them in many Mat 114—15c¢ Frank McHugh of his characteristic roles. Frank says that a squeak from one of his shoes at the proper moment often saves a line of dialogue. ® Advance Feature on Sheridan PUBL Cll’ @ Ann Sheridan Likes Films That Thrill And Amuse—Her New Picture Does Both It’s all right with Ann Sheridan, if the rest of the world, taking her and her films as examples, lavishes a liking for romance on its motion picture screens. Ann doesn’t go along with these liking. “T like moving pictures that have a lot of fast moving action,” says Ann. “Maybe that’s because I don’t move so fast, myself.” Ann was relaxing near a fan on the set of Warner Bros.’ “City For Conquest” as_ she talked. She is co-featured in this picture with Jimmy Cagney, at the Strand Friday. Omph is one of the last things Ann troubles herself to look for, when she pays her money at the box office. “T like to be thrilled, and I like to laugh,’ says Annie. “I laugh at anything on the screen that has the slightest tendency to be funny. Ill shop around and drive across town, if I think I have spotted a picture with good comedy.” Ann herself hasn’t played comedy roles, but thinks she might like to. “It takes cleverness to be really funny, don’t you think?” she asks. Miss Sheridan also likes genuine emotion in the pictures she pays to see. “T’m one of the most easily pleased of moviegoers,” she confesses. “I never got over being a fan. I’m as big a fan for my favorites as I ever was. I can swoon at Bette Davis. I used to like to listen to Bing Crosby and I still do. Paul Muni could twist me around his little finger while he was on the screen and I sat out in the audience. I always forget I know Eddie Robinson personally when I see him start something crafty for the camera. And I always get a big kick out of the moment when Gary @ Advance Feature on Cagney Still AS 589; Mat 214—30< ANN SHERIDAN Cooper stops acting lazy, and comes to life with something that sweeps the villains into the discard and makes the heroine sorry she overlooked him.” Ann doesn’t say much about “Sheridan,” as she calls herself, on the screen. “T go to see ‘Sheridan’ once or twice for every picture she’s in. Sometimes I go to see pictures like ‘Torrid Zone’ and ‘Angels With Dirty Faces’ several times. I watch those pictures and I say to myself: ‘That “Sheridan” is a lucky kid to be up there with Cagney and O’Brien.’ “When the girl does something that I think is good, I feel like giving her a hand. I’d feel proud if it was my own sister or my girl friend, or any girl, who got her chance to play with Cagney, and didn’t make a mess of it. “But the ‘Sheridan’ I see in pictures is hammy, too, at times. I’m not puffed up about her. I think she can become a better actress. In fact, I’m _ taking steps,” said Miss Sheridan. ‘City For Conquest Mirrors Cagney’s Own Life Story Luckily for Novelist Aben Kandel, two of his most confirmed fans are gentlemen in the motion picture business. For Novelist Kandel’s two staunchest fans are Jimmy and Bill Cagney, and Jimmy and Bill are the intermediaries who were responsible for transferring Kandel’s well known book, “City For Conquest,” to the screen. The picture has its first local showing next Friday at the Strand Theatre. Jimmy Cagney read the book four years ago, and gave it to Bill to read. Brother Bill said, “This book would make a fine motion picture.” Bill said that in his opinion, Kandel’s volume came as close to interpreting the vast impersonal soul of the great city, as any book about New York had ever been able to do. “Besides,” said Bill Cagney, “The hero, Danny Kenny, is up against some of the same exact problems that faced you and me when we were trying to get started in life in New York, and he makes some of the same decisions you made, Jimmy.” Bill Cagney called attention in particular to the time that his brother, Jimmy, was offered more money than Jimmy had ever made at any one time be Still JC 511; Mat 116—15¢e JAMES CAGNEY fore, if he would turn professional boxer. But Jimmy, although an adept with his fists in the neighborhood fights, and the little boxing matches of the amateur clubs on the side street, saw fit not to enter the ring. Jimmy did not regard the pugilistic arena as the proper place for a young fellow whose two brothers had already put themselves through college and medical school, and who, himself, had attained the age of 18 years with the goal, always before him, of a college course in history and English at Columbia University. Jim Cagney rejected the offer of a livelihood as a professional boxer, and the reasons that stirred Jimmy Cagney to make up his mind, a decade ago, were the same reasons that Aben Kandel found for the hero of his book. In “City For Conquest,” Jim Cagney plays the starring role, with Ann Sheridan as his costar. His brother, Bill Cagney, is the associate producer under whom Director Anatole Litvak brought the story to the screen. Hal B. Wallis, executive producer at Warner Bros., is the man who saw the screen possibilities in the story, after Bill Cagney had been carrying Kandel’s volume around with him for four years, trying to gain the interest of some major film studio, in producing it. Others featured in the cast of the film are Frank Craven, Donald Crisp, Frank McHugh, Arthur Kennedy, George Tobias, Jerome Cowan, Joyce Compton, Anthony Quinn, Lee Patrick and many other famous players. © Production Story ‘City For Conquest’ Authentic Picture Of New York Life In bringing authenticity into Warner Bros.’ melodrama of New York life “City For Conquest,” which opens Friday at the Strand, the studio sent a location crew headed by Byron (“Bunny”) Haskins, directorcamera man, and his technical force, to shoot “key” scenes about New York City. Haskins and his men spent three weeks prowling New York, from the Battery to the Williamsburg bridge, in their quest for striking shots in the actual locale. Jimmy Cagney, Ann Sheridan, Donald Crisp, Blanche Yurka, Anthony Quinn, Arthur Kennedy and Elia Kazan take the leading roles in the New York background. Kennedy and Kazan are New York actors who were imported from their home footlights to Hollywood upon completion of the New York “key” shots, Kennedy playing Cagney’s gentle natured younger brother in the picture, and Kazan, who hails from the “Group Theater,” playing “Googy,”’ a slum boy who grows up to become a big shot racketeer, and who loses his life out of his loyalty to his boyhood chum, Cagney. ® Cagney Story Cagney Sketches Used in Film Two of the sketches of New York street corners which Bob Haas, art director, submitted to Anatole Litvak for that director’s approval in scenes of “‘City For Conquest,’ the new James Cagney-Ann Sheridan co-staring film, opening at the Strand on Friday, did not bear the artist’s signature in a lower corner. The sketches, which were approved by Litvak, and which are being built by carpenters, painters, and others of the mechanical and technical force, didn’t bear the name of Bob Haas because Haas didn’t draw them, and they didn’t bear the name of the real artist, because the latter is a non-professional. The sketches were by Jimmy Cagney, and embodied Jimmy’s own recollections of his boyhood days on Sixty-ninth Street. Ann Sheridan got one of the sketches which she said she would cherish as a prized souvenir of the picture. Frank McHugh got the other sketch. He is Jimmy’s close friend. Three other interesting sketches of the “City For Conquest” scenes were drawn by the famous artist, Will Crawford, and kept by Cagney himself. Jimmy Cagney had at one time intended to follow the career of professional artist, and sold many sketches of neighborhood street scenes on Manhattan Island, while he was a youth attending Columbia University. Exercises on Bar Jimmy Cagney, star of “City For Conquest,” still cherishes the exercise bar which he used when he was a dancing actor in New York. It’s a long wooden rod set in brackets along the wall of his bedroom in Hollywood, and Jimmy still hooks his toe in it and does all kinds of bending exercises, his weight suspended from the hooked foot, in order to keep supple.