Dark Victory (Warner Bros.) (1939)

Irish Colleen Promises To Be One Of 1939's Stars Geraldine Fitzgerald Of Dublin Makes Debut In “Dark Victory” (Advance Feature) 6 a Lena Irish eyes are smiling, all the world seems bright and gay.” And Irish eyes are smiling from Hollywood’s silver screen today. They’re the sea-green eyes of auburn-haired Geraldine Fitzgerald, as lovely and talented a colleen as ever crossed the Atlantic from the land of the shamrock. That, at least, is what Warner Bros, Studio heads think of Miss Fitzgerald, who makes her Ameri Mat 102—15c GERALDINE FITZGERALD can screen debut in “Dark Victory,” coming to the Music Hall on Friday. They’re confident that opinion will be unanimously shared by film audiences, and that Miss Fitzgerald will take her place as one of the brightest new stars of 1939. Born and educated in Dublin, Miss Fitzgerald received her early dramatic training in that city. Her aunt, Shelah Richards, was leading lady in the famed Abbey Theatre. So Geraldine, being an independent body who wanted to rise or fall through her own efforts, tried out at the Gate Theatre, the Abbey’s chief rival in Dublin. She did so well that she became a regular member of the Gate company. London, England, was her next stop on the inevitable road to Hollywood. She was a success on the stage there and was starred in two British pictures, “The Turn of the Tide,” and “Mill on the Floss,” Then, in the summer of 1938, she accepted an offer to go to New York and be featured in the Mercury Theatre’s presentation of NO GREATER LOVE Co-starred for the seventh time, Bette Davis and George Brent achieve their § greatest triumph in "Dark Victory," the story of a love that won a victory over darkness and de feat. The drama will have its first local showing at Radio City Music Hall on Friday, Mat 208—30c George Bernard Shaw’s “Heartbreak House.” That’s when Hollywood’s star finders discovered her. And not one of them, but all of them. “Heartbreak House” hadn’t run a week until every major studio had representatives talking movie contract to her, Miss Fitzgerald settled the controversy by signing with Warner Bros. When the Shaw play ended its successful run, she hurried back to Ireland for a brief vacation. Urgent cables summoned her to Hollywood late in September and she was immediately launched on her American screen career with an exceptionally strong dramatic role supporting Bette Davis in “Dark Victory.” When that picture was finished, Samuel Goldwyn borrowed her from Warner Bros, for a leading role in “Wuthering Heights.” Miss Fitzgerald is 24 years of age, weighs 112 pounds, is fivefeet-three-and-a-half inches tall, and speaks with just a delightful trace of Irish accent. She admits she gets terribly homesick for Ireland at times but her friends tell her she’ll have to get over that. She’s due to remain in Hollywood for a long, long time. Bette Davis Prefers Beauty To Realism Bette Davis is one screen actress who-will not be shown awakening in the morning with her hair beautifully marcelled and her makeup intact. There’sa scene in “Dark Victory,” the Warner Bros. picture opening Friday at the Music _ Hall, which shows her in her bed, being aroused from sound sleep by the ringing of the telephone. Miss Davis played this scene, and all the ensuing sequence, without lipstick, rouge or any makeup save a touch of mascara on her eye lashes. She also wore her short bobbed hair deliberately tousled, as it naturally would be after a night’s sleep. What makes this concession to realism the more daring is the fact that this boudoir action constitutes Miss Davis’ entrance scenes in the Warner Bros. drama. Audiences will get their first glimpse of the star as her tousled head emerges from coverlets and pillows. Mat 202—30c THEY'RE GOOD COMPANIONS — Bette Davis and Geraldine Fitzgerald in a dramatic moment from "Dark Victory," the picture which is opening at the Radio City Music Hall on Friday. Brent Travelled Rocky Road To Success (Advance Reader) EFORE he retires, George Brent intends to get a job with a circus or tent show, even if he only holds it for a few hours. He needs that experience to round out his record of having appeared in every branch of the show business. Although far from an oldster in years, Brent already had run the theatrical gamut from stage stock to film stardom. He has served his Mat 105—15c GEORGE BRENT time in road companies. which played the “tank towns,” done a hitch with two-a-day vaudeville, had successful seasons on New York’s Broadway, and gone from serials to top flight dramas in the pictures, But he never has appeared under canvas. “T just missed it one time,” Brent ‘recalled in a conversation at the Warner Bros. Studio, where he was working opposite Bette Davis in “Dark Victory,” which opens at the Music Hall next Friday. “I was all set to sign for a Chautauqua tour. Then I got a better offer to go into stock. Before I finally wash up in the business I want to do a short stretch—and I don’t care how short—under canvas, just to complete the record.” Brent said he wouldn’t trade his varied experience for an equal number of years of stardom on Broadway or in pictures. “And that,” he added, “isn’t sour grapes. You hear a lot about overnight success but you don’t see so many examples of it.” ‘Snow’ Use To Buck Nature, Prop Men Find (Advance Reader) T takes nature months to effect a change of seasons but Hollywood’s motion picture technicians can do the job in a few hours. Sometimes, however, nature strikes back at the fast working film men, just to show who’s really boss. That happened twice when set dressers of the Warner Bros. Studio took liberties with the calendar in preparing backgromids for the Bette Davis starring picture, “Dark Victory,” which opens at Radio City Music Hall Friday. The first job the set dressers did was that of bringing winter to a sun-drenched section of the San Fernando Valley several weeks ahead of schedule. Adding insult to injury, they made it a New England winter instead of a California cold season. They did the job mostly with corn flakes and gypsum dust, which in the movies serve for snow. Nature got in a huff about that. She huffed and puffed with a 45 mile an hour wind until she blew all the snow away. The film men put it back and nature blew it away again. The wily MHollywoodians then copped a sneaker by dipping their corn flakes in white lead. In the short space of a single night, the same _ set dressers changed the New England winter to a New England spring. They hung thousands of leaves on the bare branches of transplated elm trees. They spread two full acres of grass mats to provide a lightning-growth green carpet in place of the “snow.” They threaded leaves on grape vines, draped arbors with wisteria blossoms and planted a garden of shrubs. Nature let them gloat over their work for a few hours, Then she kicked up an awful fuss. She ranted and raved with a 60-milean-hour wind, until she blew all the leaves away. The film men threaded them on again and sat back, with fingers crossed, to awit the next attack. It didn’t come, Apparently satisfied, nature turned her last laugh into a benign smile and left the handicraft to the “miracle workers.” “For the yesterday influence that has found its way off the screen into her personal wardrobe,” Bette Davis, one of Hollywood's first actresses, was selected as one of America’s twelve best-dressed women. The poll was made by leaaing stylists led by Emil Alvin Hartman, director of the Fashion Academy at Rockefeller Center. Page Thirteen