Daughters Courageous (Warner Bros.) (1939)

ADVANCE PUBLICITY for “DAUGHTERS COURAGEOUS” John Garfield fools the eynies by not soins Hollywood Star of “Daughters Courageous” has made brilliant success in films, but he’s still modest ‘‘Tf you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs, then you’re —.’’ Hollywood would paraphrase Kipling ’s memorable lines and finish with a ‘‘then you’re okay, my son’’ if any one happened to recall Kipling and his poem ‘‘If’’ in connection with young John Garfield, the wonder boy of 1938. After Garfield’s oft-mentioned screen debut in ‘‘ Four Daughters’’ the immediate challenge went up ‘¢ Yeah, he’s a good guy now, but wait about a year and see what happens to him. He’ll probably go high-hat.’’ In Hollywood that is not the ery of the cynic. It is a prediction based on past experience. A snooty town, Hollywood, where success is measured by praise received for your work in your last picture (if it happens to be good), and not for your performance in the one before that or the one before that. So everyone sat back to watch what would happen to John Garfield. Well, they’ve had their answer, and are pleasantly surprised. The John Garfield of today, after stellar performances in ‘‘ Four Daughters,’?’? ‘‘They Made Me a Criminal,’’ ‘‘Juarez’’ and ‘‘ Daughters Courageous’’ (his latest for Warner Bros., which opens next Friday at the Strand Theatre) is precisely the same brown-eyed, curly-haired, warm-smiling and friendly young fellow who came to Hollywood more than a year ago. One change only is noticed in him. He now has a certain confidence in himself that he lacked when he first came, and that certainly is understandable. A few weeks after he came to Warner Bros., a director took him to his first big party. He didn’t lke it and he still doesn’t like Hollywood parties. When he first came to town he bought a mediumpriced coupe. He still drives it. When he first came to town he found his chief diversion in walking, at night, down South Main Street in Los Angeles, an odorous district of all night nickle movies, pawn shops, burlesque shows, flop houses, and midnight missions. He thinks that’s still the most interesting place in town. He never owned a dinner jacket, in fact, until his wife made him buy one to wear at the premiere of ‘‘Juarez’’ several months ago. He still lives in the modest rented house he took when he first arrived; never has even considered asking the studio for a larger C dressing room than the cubicle to which he was first assigned as an unimportant supporting player. On location at Monterey, Calif., for ‘‘Daughters Courageous’? with Priscilla, Rosemary and Lola Lane, Gale Page, Claude Rains, Donald Crisp, he spent his free time with the property men and the electricians. He felt easier with them, sincerely enjoyed their games of dime-limit poker, night ‘‘softball,’’ and preferred a stroll down to the pier to a bridge game in the swank Hotel Del Monte. Yep, the boys at Warners and the guys at Hollywood and Vine all agree when Johnnie’s name is mentioned : ‘‘Garfield? He’s okay.’’ Director Curtiz Settled All Film Family Problems Michael Curtiz found himself the father of six, with all the problems of parenthood, in his latest directorial assignment, ‘Daughters Courageous,” the Warner Bros. picture opening next Friday at the Strand Theatre. The members of his family were the three Lane sisters, Gale Page, and their screen mother, Fay Bainter, and screen father, Claude Rains—the Masters family in the story. Curtiz found himself the final voice in all the family’s problems—clothes, food, manners, and conduct. When the girls wanted to know which costumes looked best, Mike was asked . . . Did Rosemary’s tennis shorts look better than the linen skirt, and were Gale’s white shoes better than the brown? A discussion arose about who was entitled to sit in the comfortable chair by the fire—Mother Bainter, Father Rains, or one of the youngsters. To Mike they brought the problem. Mike had to plan the menu for the meals served in the picture. He had to plan the seating arrangement when the girls invited their friends. And he had to stock the ice box so that Papa Rains and guest John Garfield could raid it. It was a great big, happy family, this Masters family—and an experience in fatherhood for the director, Michael Curtiz. arate Mat 210—30c MAN-TO-MAN TALK—Claude Rains is the papa, and John Garfield a suitor who comes a-wooing one of the "Daughters Courageous" in the new film which is scheduled to make its local debut on Friday at the Strand. School Kids Get Time Off To Watch Stars Motion pictures have long been mentioned as an educational force for the younger generation, but it remained for J. R. Croad, superintendent of the Monterey, California, grade school. system, and J. R. Mc Killop, superintendent of the Carmel-Monterey High School, to give it practical application. When the Warner Bros. troupe which made ‘Daughters Courageous,” the comedy opening next Friday at the Strand Theatre, moved fom the studio to Monterey and Carmel to film location scenes, Superintendents Croad and McKillop gave orders to dismiss school classes for portions of each school day, at the teachers’ discretion, in order that the pupils and teachers could watch movies made. Error In Program Gave May Robson Her Stage Name May Robson chose her seventyfifth birthday to make a confession. May confessed that she has been operating for the last fiftysix years — the length of her career as a stage and screen player — under an assumed name. According to Miss Robson’s admission, her real name was Mary Mat 101—15¢ MAY ROBSON Robinson, under which she was born in Melbourne, Australia, April 19, 1864, but she was given the assumed name as the result of a typographical error when she played her first stage role in Brooklyn, Sept. 16, 1883. That was in the play ‘‘A Hoop of Gold,’’ and May, who was in tears because both her first and last names were mis-spelled in the program, was cheered by the famous Mrs. Cortain, starring in the production, with the advice that the wrong name gave her a ‘‘lucky start’’ and that she never should change it. And May never did. The veteran actress is a featured member of the east of ‘“‘Daughters Courageous,’’ the Warner Bros. domestic comedy which will open next Friday at the Strand Theatre. Garfield Was That “Bum From Mexico” When Michael Curtiz, director of ‘‘Daughters Courageous,’’ the Warner Bros. picture coming to the Strand Theatre, got excited one day and the cast failed to understand which player he was talking to, his way of indicating he meant John Garfield (just finished with the role of Porfirio Diaz in ‘¢ Juarez,’??)was, to. say: ““T mean that bum from Mexico who just shaved off his beard.’’ [8] SISTER ACT—Priscilla and Rosemary Lane are screen sisters as well as real sisters in ‘Daughters Courageous,’ coming to the Strand. Lane girls from Towa have made Hollywood fit their pattern Three of the “Daughters Courageous,” bern Mullicans back in the mid-west, have won unique places in filmland By Carlisle Jones Three of the Mullican sisters of Indianola, Iowa, are in Hollywood and the place may never be quite the same again. There is something about middle westerners generally and Iowans particularly that can’t be made to fit into the Hollywood mold without reshaping the pattern. And the Mullicans fit a pattern all their own. Dorothy Mullican came first. She hitched her wagon to Gus Edwards’ star some years ago, when that worthy had his company playing in Des Moines, eighteen miles from Dorothy’s home. She asked for a part in the act he was heading and he seemed to be favorably impressed. “What is your name?” he asked, although she had been properly introduced and everything, before she had applied for a job. She told him again. “Dorothy Mullican,” she said, accenting all the syllables. “Too bad,’ sighed Edwards, “but it can be fixed. We'll call you Lola Lane.” Dorothy, newly dubbed Lola, rolled it off her tongue. “It’s pretty,’ she agreed, and a few years later she was seeing it in lights on movie theatre marquees. It was eight long years before Lola got reinforcements from her family for the Mullican assault on the film capital. The sisters, two of them at least, had been bitten by the theatrical bug shortly after Dorothy became Lola and Lola became a name player on the screen. One fateful day, Rosemary and her mother went to New York to bring Priscilla home after her graduation from the Fagin Dramatic School. It’s an old story now to the girls but it was an exciting day to them then. The two girls and their mother stopped at a music publishing firm to buy some new music. They tried the new songs out right there and fate, in the person of Fred Waring, passed by in the hall outside and heard. You know what happened. Rosemary and Priscilla Lane signed contracts with Waring’s Pennsylvanians and two more Mullicans were started on the long, slow road to Hollywood. It was in 1932 that Rosemary and Priscilla started their careers with Waring. They stayed with him for five years. When they started with him, Rosemary was 16 and Priscilla 14. They sang for several radio programs with Waring and his band and near the end of the five year contract when both Rosemary and Priscilla arrived in Hollywood to work in the Warher Bros. picture, “Varsity Show,’ both girls were fairly well known about the country. Of course they stayed in Hollywood. No reasonably presentable, fairly talented young woman ever comes to Hollywood as a professional entertainer without staying there or returning there as quickly as possible. Warners signed the two of them for long term contracts. Mrs. Mullican came along. Lola was already established as a suc cessful free lance player who worked occasionally in Warner pictures. That’s how the Mullicans stormed Hollywood! The picture called “Four Daughters,” in which the Lanes played three of the title roles, raised the sisters to stardom on the Warner roster. Their latest picture together is “Daughters Courageous,” which comes to the Strand Friday. Fay Bainter Proud Of Her ‘Oscar’ Fay Bainter is one Academy Award winner who doesn’t hide her pleasure over her “Oscar.” Miss Bainter at first was for finding an inconspicuous place in the living room of her home for her statuette, but her husband immediately vetoed that. Now the emblem which Miss Bainter was awarded for her acting excellence in “Jezebel” last spring lifts its golden arms from a position on the family mantelpiece, and the actress gives a little laugh as she tells how much more company her household has been entertaining in that living room since before the “oscar” had been standing there. Miss Bainter is featured with the Lane sisters, Gale Page, May Robson, John Garfield, Jeffrey Lynn, Claude Rains, Donald Crisp, Frank McHugh and Dick Foran in the cast of “Daughters Courageous,” soon at the Strand.