Daughters Courageous (Warner Bros.) (1939)

CURRENT PUBLICITY for “DAUGHTERS COURAGEOUS” ‘Baby of “Daughters Courageous” prefers career to marriage Lucky breaks brought her to Hollywood stardom and now she wants An interview with PRISCILLA LANE Now that ’m of age I think it is time for my family and my family’s friends to stop calling me “the baby.” I’m a woman of experience, I am. Ive worked and earned a salary for seven years. Where does anybody get this “baby” stuff, anyway ? It seems so long ago that Fred Waring told Rosemary and mother and me that we were all to go to Hollywood to work in a picture. I was dreadfully excited about it, because Lola was already in Hollywood and could, we thought, introduce us to Errol Flynn and Jimmy Cagney and Clark Gable. None of us \ Mat 114—15e PRISCILLA LANE knew how busy we were to be or how things were turn out in Hollywood. Almost before we knew it that picture was finished and Rosemary and I had signed contracts with Warner Bros. and we were living in a house with a swimming pool in the back yard. All the years I worked on the stage with the band I thought I wanted to grow up, get married just as soon as possible and raise a family of my own. I know how much fun it is to be a member of a big family. There are five girls in ours and we certainly had good times. But I think most young women would decide as I finally did —that marriage could be postponed for a little while and that I could accept the exciting substitute of motion picture work at least until my middle twenties. It was about the time we were to stay around awhile making “Four Daughters” that I made that decision. It was my own and having made it I felt I had really grown up. Always before the family had sat in on my conferences with myself. It was then that I announced at home that I thought I had outgrown the nickname of “Baby.” (They didn’t call me that very often, anyway. Most of the time I’m called Pat by the family.) Of course I had a lot to learn about acting. I find that as the months go by and I am in another cast of another picture, the amount of acting ability I need and the amount I must learn grows greater every week. I don’t see any end to it now. It looks as though I’l] be learning forever. I know, too, what a big part luck has had in my career to date. If Fred Waring hadn’t heard and seen Rosemary and me singing a song in a music publishing house in New York he never would have heard of the Lane sisters. If he hadn’t been patient and kind, I could never have stuck it out all the years mother and Rosemary and I traveled with him. If he hadn’t accepted the offer to make a picture in Hollywood, I might never have been in pictures at all. I lie awake at night sometimes counting over on my fingers all the lucky breaks that made it possible for me to be doing what I am doing—and what I love to do. I was fourteen when I started work with the Fred Waring Pennsylvanians. I lied about my age all over the country—they can’t put a woman in jail for that, can they? According to Rosemary, I was eighteen for four years. I was, all the years I was actually 15, 16, 17 and 18. It’s been fun to be my own age in Hollywood. Nobody should feel sorry for me. Ive had fun all those years and in my case I wouldn’t want to change them for years in finishing schools or college or years behind a kitchen apron. I. don’t regret all the dishwashing I have missed although I feel that dishwashing might be a very delightful occupation, if one were washing them for the right man. But now I’m of age, I don’t want to start on the dishes just yet. Of course a woman ean always change her mind. Mat 204—30e LOOK WHO'S HERE — Not a double exposure, but May Robson giving herself a piece of her mind in a scene from "Daughters Courageous," the romantic drama which is currently showing at the Strand Theatre. “Dead End Co-eds’’ Fay Bainter, who plays the youthful looking mother of the three Lane sisters in Warner Bros.” “Daughters Courageous,” now running at the Strand Theatre, called the Lanes “my first born,” “my second born” and “my third born,” but Director Michael Curtiz called them ‘Dead End Co-eds.” Love Scenes Stil Bit Of An Ordeal To Jeffrey Lynn Does it make any difference to an innately bashful young film hero what girl they select to play opposite him? “Youre darned tootin’!” cries Jeffrey Lynn, with fervor. Jeffrey had come out of one of those warm young love scenes in “Daughters Courageous,” the Warner Bros. comedy now playing at the Strand Theatre. He thrust a finger into his collar and loosened it around his throat. He patted the make-up carefully on his flushed brow. “Hey,’ said the make-up man, unfeelingly, “your lips are all messed up with Priscilla’s war paint. And that make-up on your coat lapel—let’s brush it off.” Jeffrey shrugged. “Matter-of-fact stuff, this picture making,’ he muttered. Make-up adjusted, he settled back into a canvas chair, drank a glass of ice water. “Ah, that’s better!” he said, after a long draft. Priscilla Lane, who had shared the love scene with him, didn’t join the group. She looked a little abashed — glanced toward her chair, and then decided on her dressing room, which was beside the set. “Priscilla,” chuckled a_ hairdresser, “looks flustered. Nearly as flustered as you, Jeff!” The film folk around, veterans of a far greater number of makebelieve love scenes of various temperatures than either of the young lovers in this picture, laughed. “Yow ll get over it, Jeff,’ said an electrician. “You'll learn to drop the gal when the director says ‘Cut,’ and come off the set all hot and bothered to find out what horse won the sixth race.” “T wonder!” was Lynn’s reply. “Anyway it’s lucky I’m in this one with Priscilla. Our being together in ‘Four Daughters’ and in ‘Yes, My Darling Daughter,’ makes it seem more natural for us to be sweethearts in this one.” Fay Bainter, Gale Page, and May Robson laughed. Claude Rains and Donald Crisp smiled indulgently. “You know, my boy,’ Rains said to Lynn, “I’ve been in a great many love scenes, here and in England, but I’ve never quite reached the stage where I’m thinking about race horses the instant the scene is over.” Donald Crisp Is A Skipper Now Donald Crisp went to a tutor, as a grown man, for more than a year, just because he once had a nightmare about being lost in the middle of the ocean, Crisp’s tutor was a mathematician, and he taught Donald the science of navigation. After taking the course, Crisp passed the rigid examinations entitling him to a navigator’s license and a master’s papers at sea. The actor explained one day on the set of “Daughters Courageous,’’ that he wants to be able to pilot his own yacht in case his captain should suddenly be incapacitated. One night, he dreamed that such a thing happened, and the dream frightened him so, that he engaged the tutor the very next day. [11] sata Mat 201—30¢ HE'S GOT DOUBLE TROUBLE — Dick Foran is trying awfully hard to make up his mind between Gale Page (left) and Rozemary Lane, two of the ''Daugh ters Courageous." At the moment it looks like a draw. Wherein A Mystery Is Explain SHORTS = ed. . . May Robson Turns The Tables and Band Plays On Set plaining that (Mat 104—15c) When someone on the set of ‘‘Daughters Courageous’’ asked Mrs. Cora Lane why she ealled her two youngest girls, Priscilla and Rosemary the ‘“Shoebin Girls, ?? she embarrassed them both by ex when they were tiny tots back in Towa, they had long mystified her by disappearing for hours on end, particularly after they’d been up to some mischief. It took Mrs. Lane many years to find out that their hideout had been a big shoebin in an upstairs closet. May Robson recently turned the tables on her secretary and companion, Lillian Harmer. Deciding that Lillian needed a change, she got her a role in a Jack Holt picture, and for the two weeks that Miss Harmer was at the studio, May herself accompanied her to work each day, helped her to learn her lines, saw to it that she had cool drinks waiting for her after each scene, and helped her with her wardrobe and make-up. Rosemary Lane who has a genius for mixing fun with work, recently organized a three-piece band on the set of ‘‘Daughters Courageous.’’ Rosemary used the prop man’s locomotive whistle, with sister Lola accompanying on the piano, and John Garfield joining in with the accordion he plays in the film. Director Curtiz tried to stop them by blowing a police whistle, at which point he was immediately ed mustered into the orchestra. (Mat 105—15c) Most talkative people around the Warner Bros. lot are the twin scenarists. Julius and Philip Epstein, who authored the script of “Daughters Courageous.” Both young men have “been around” in show business for several years, and there isn’t a subject upon which they have not an opinion they will be glad to air. Although they have not always worked together, the twins’ careers have followed very similar and successful lines. Lola Lane. (Mat 107—15c) Lane sisters in real life! Haunted by domesticity is the current plight of In last year’s brilliantly successful ‘<Wour Daughters,’’ she wed comfortable and placid Frank McHugh about midway through the film. Now, in ‘‘Daughters Courageous,’’ she finds herself cast as a home-loving girl whose idea of a good time is rearranging furniture, and again she is paired with McHugh. Lola, ‘‘that I’m the most excitement-loving of the ‘The irony of it is,’’ says 29 other three "Daughters Courageous,’ Mat 208—30e RIFT IN THE FAMILY, or maybe it's in Priscilla Lane's bathing suit. The Gale Page, Rosemary and Lola Lane seem to be enjoying the situation hugely in the current Strand film.