Earthworm Tractors (Warner Bros.) (1930)

EARTHWORM TRACTORS PUBLICIAY Athletes Have Hard Time As Actors, Says Foran Heavy In Joe E. Brown’s Comedy, ‘Earthworm Tractors” Thinks Public Likes Them Slim According to tall, red-headed, handsome Dick Foran, star in Westerns and now in a featured role in the First National picture, “Earthworm Tractors’, which is showing at the............se0 Theatre, there are disadvantages in being a burly ex-football player. “Tt’s hard to convince anyone, in or out of pictures, that a man who is more than six feet tall and around two hundred in weight can act,” Dick declares. “Then put a chest and shoulders on him and a few muscles here and there, along with a face that shows it’s had a few hard knocks, and it’s well nigh impossible.” Acting as an art, Dick thinks, is associated in the public mind with lean Barrymores, high-strung Howards, wiry, quick-moving Cagneys, Robinsons, Munis and rolypoly Laughtons. “Not,” added Dick quickly, “that I’m setting up as an actor, or have any exaggerated notions of my ability to be one. I’d simply like to see the impression stamped out that a man of any given phyiical characteristics is necessarily eliminated from competition in the acting art. And I don’t think I merely imagine that having the appearance of a heavyweight athlete does create such a prejudice as I have described. “One of the best actors I know is husky Pat O’Brien, and he has been given recognition for his performances. Another fine actor is Nat Pendleton, who for the most part has been kept in comedy work or character heavies because, I fancy, he’s a big husky who was once amateur wrestling champion. “George O’Brien and Buck Jones are real actors, in my humble opinion, and while they’re very popular stars, their histrionic ability hasn’t been fully appreciated,” Dick pointed out. Several discerning critics, two of whom are especially well known, gave Foran a big hand for his work in “The Petrified Forest”, lauding him for delivering a part which stood out in the face of competition from Leslie Howard, Bette Davis and Humphrey Bogart, whose performances were generally acclaimed among the greatest of the year. But that wasn’t the cause of Dick’s cry for a square deal for big, athletic-looking huskies. He’s a modest fellow in real life, and when he portrays one of his smart-aleck screen roles—he has done several of the sort—that too is further proof that he knows how to act. In Dick’s latest film, “Earthworm Tractors”, with Joe E. Brown, the latter is seen as a blundering but likeable and lucky salesman. Foran, his rival in the tractor-selling business, is in love, and he wins Brown’s fiancee, Carol Hughes, which is all right for Joe E., because meanwhile he has fallen for another girl. According to Raymond Enright, who directed “Earthworm ‘Tractors”, he’ll back Foran as an actor in any sort of role in which the handsome husky could possibly fit. “Yet it is the truth that a big athletic fellow of the modern football-playing sort has to buck a tough line of prejudice, which is built up by the totally wrong conception that husky athletes are necessarily ‘dumb’,” Enright points out. “That opinion, however, is dying out along with a lot of other false beliefs about the screen. “T recall the time when we had little skinny film heroes playing football idols and nonchalantly flashing their golden ‘All American’ medals. Fellows who couldn’t have made a high school team. Fortunately that day has passed.” “Rarthworm Tractors” is a riotous comedy based on a series of Saturday Evening Post stories by William Hazlett Upson. Besides Joe E. Brown, the star, and Foran, the cast includes June Travis, Guy Kibbee, Carol Hughes, Gene Lockhart, Olin Howland and Joseph Crehan. Two Strand Openings Joe FE. Brown is the world’s most stupendous tractor salesman, according to First National’s latest picture, “Earthworm Tractors”, at thé. Theatre, which shows him thrown out by his best customers, turned down by his best gal (June Travis) and knocked for a loop by the most convulsing series of madcap mishaps that ever happened to a hapless hero. Guy Kibbee, Carol Hughes and Dick Foran are featured in the cast. Mat No. 206—20c Page Twenty Four June Travis Sets New Gown Style Two-toned frocks, especially those combining pale powder blue with navy, are now popular, according to Orry-Kelly, First National designer. June Travis, playing in “Earthworm Tractors”, the new Joe E. Brown comedy now showing at the. akoie anes Theatre, has a jacket-ensemble on which the top of the navy frock is in pale blue, with a low U-shaped yoke stitched crisply up to a round collar. The matching jacket is also light blue, with wide stitched collar and navy buttons. Guy Kibbee Is Going To Have A Moat Other screen players may have their tiled swimming pools, but Guy Kibbee is going to have a moat. “It’s going to be a real moat, with water in it, and it will run around my new house,” he said. “You don’t mean house,” interjected Joe E. Brown, star of “Karthworm Tractors”, now showing at the... ese Theatre and in which Kibbee is featured. “You mean castle. Fences and children run around houses. A moat, if you mean one of those medieval ditches, deserves no less than a castle.” “Well,” admitted Kibbee, “my new house is going to look something like a castle. That is, it will follow the design, on a smaller scale, of an old Scottish castle of the Highlands in which my paternal ancestors lived.” Restaurateurs Gasp At Spilled Milk Waste of foodstuffs is something that might tend to give the average efficient restaurant man a severe case of the fiscal jitters. Fancy then, if you can fifty assembled restaurateurs witnessing the destruction of 200 gallons of milk and over 500 dozens of perfectly good eggs. : The sequence was an uproarious one in the new Joe E. Brown latest First National comedy, “Barthworm Tractors”, which COMES tO thE..s.eseereeresereerers Theatre OM scassesecoescscessresnenrsarene The restaurant men who witnessed the spilling of milk and smashing of eggs were delegates to the National Restaurant Association convention. When Joe E. Brown, at the controls of a wildly careening “Earthworm” tractor on a depot platform set did his smashing scene, there was a gasp and then a concert of laughs. Many Pretty Girls In Joe E. Brown Film “Barthworm Tractors”, Joe E. Brown’s latest First National comedy, which comes to the.........+ Theatre OM.......scesccesreesrsereeee , isn’t a musical but it’s full of pretty girls. Opposite Brown are two leading ladies, June Travis and Carol Hughes. Starlets Victoria Vinson, Rosalind Marquis, Anne Nagel and Jean Sennett have important smaller roles and there are also charming bits of femininity in country village extra maids encountered by the travelling tractor salesman Alexander Botts, portrayed by Joe. Actress Acquires Painless Sun Tan Carol Hughes, who with June Travis shares the lead opposite Joe E. Brown in the comedy star’s latest First National picture, “Barthworm ‘Tractors’, which COMES tO the.issreccccrrccererseees Theatre OUMscetcatesnensteststasesete recommends only one sure-fire, painless sun tan formula. You can painlessly acquire an hour’s tan a day, according to Carol, if you take no more than five minutes at a time at the start, and fifteen minutes early and Jate in the day. Okay--What’s This? Thats Joe EK. Brown on the left eating caraway seeds, Rosalind Marqus imitating the “China clipper” (eye pulled into Oriental slant, fingers imitating barber’s clipper) and Dick Foran showing how the quints take a shower. You'll see them all in First National’s new comedy, “Earthworm Tractors”, in which Brown plays the role of a super-salesman of tractors. Mat No. 205—20¢ June Travis Tells Girls How To Become Beautiful Feminine Lead In “‘Earthworm Tractors’? Advises Seasonal Athletic Sports June Travis, feminine lead opposite Joe E. Brown in the First National production, ‘Earthworm Tractors”, now showing BE TNC is ssicscssatpccnalin ie, Theatre, prescribes an athletic formula for school girls as ‘‘the best way to keep healthy, hearty, sane and beautiful all your life’. “Learn a good, fascinating outdoor game for every season of the year, and stick to each one you select until you learn it. After that, keep on playing it each season. Don’t ‘retire’ at the ripe old age of twenty or thirty. “I know this advice isn’t impractical, for I originally got it from a forty-year-old woman who had raised four children. She told me it made for happy married life, too. And I’ve seen countless examples. May Sutton Bundy is one. After thirty years of tennis, including seasons of world championship play, Mrs. Bundy won another championship out here, just to prove she still could. “My own seasonal games are as follows: baseball (soft ball, now) basketball, swimming and hockey, in which I competed in school; tennis, and golf. I also play badminton. Out here, in California, seasons can be pretty well mixed, and many of these sports are year-round. “But I recommend clinging to the seasonal idea, even here, because part of the good a sport does you is the enthusiasm you and others bring to it. And that goes by seasons. “That is the reason I am a hearty believer in competitive sport. Part of its health-giving and humanizing influence lies in the interest hot competition engenders.” June, who entered pictures in Kay Francis’ film “Stranded”, and recently made a big hit in “Ceiling Zero”, finished “Earthworm Tractors” in exceptionally good company for an athletic-minded girl. With Carol Hughes, she was Joe E. Brown’s leading lady. And Brown is probably the top-ranking sports enthusiast among movie stars. Another connection between Brown and June is the comedy star’s friendship with her father, Harry Grabiner, vice-president of the Chicago White Sox. “June came naturally by her athletic prowess,” Brown remarks. “Her father tells me she used to work out with the Sox during spring training, when she was a school girl. She’d play some infield position and the major leaguers would artfully soften throws and batted balls directed to her. “They had to do it artfully, for if June had suspected they were pulling throws and grounders and line drives for her protection, she’d have been hurt.” June is living proof that athletics develop rather than retard the femininity of a woman. She is about as feminine a person as one could imagine, in figure, voice and mannerisms, domestic inclinations and so on. Five feet, four inches in height, she weighs 116 pounds. Her complexion is the envy of many another movie star — the sort that goes with fascinating green eyes and dark brown hair. Born in Chicago, August 7, 1915, June attended Parkside Grammar School and Starrett School for girls; matriculated at the University of California at Los Angeles, and then attended the University of Chicago. She was prominent in the social and athletic life of these schools, and also won honors in scholarship. In Hollywood she reads a great deal and studies music. In “Earthworm Tractors”, June plays the daughter of Guy Kibbee. Brown, as that demon salesman, Alexander Botts, of the famous Saturday Evening Post stories by William Hazlett Upson, falls in love with her. Joe E. Brown Uses Mud For Make-Up The cheapest variety of movie make-up yet discovered formed part of Joe E. Brown’s kit for scenes of the comedy star’s latest First National vehicle, ‘“Earthworm ‘Tractors’, which comes to Me retcecsessicwerstarteas RERUN “OB ccctcctsezsoee. On his portable dressing table, along with the powders and paints a movie actor has to use, is a little tobacco can. It contains a brown, semi-liquid substance. The substance is plain mud. With a make-up swab of the sort that is used and thrown away, Joe had to apply splotches of the mud to his face and clothes. The tobacco can was empty. The dust from which the mud was made came from the roadside. The water from a nearby tap.