Elmer the Great (Warner Bros.) (1933)

URRENT FEATURES One Doesn’t Just “Meet”’ Joe E. Brown Comedy Held Joe E. Brown at Train| Up Two Weeks by Storms | sce E. Brown Trying for Family Ball Team “Little drops of water, little grains of sand, Make the mighty ocean and the beauteous land.” HAT’S the way they taught the rhyme to the children, but there’s another side to that “little drops of water” gag. Take enough little drops of water to make a good rainstorm, and enough little grains of sand to make a baseball park, let them get all mixed up together for a period of two weeks, with a motion picture company standing by, day after day, tearing its hair and waiting for a chance to shoot a. baseball game—and you get a rough idea of some of the difficulties connected with making a picture like “Elmer the Great” during California’s winter months. Famous Comedian Always Keeps in Character and Therefore Must Be Greeted With a “‘Gag”’ Joe E. Brown, who has the stellar role in First National’s comedy, “Elmer the Great,” now showing at the . . . . Theatre, wants a family big enough to have a ball team. He already has an amateur team in Hollywood and owns a third interest in the Kansas City professional club, but he wants one in the home circle. He has two sons as a starter, Donold and Joe E., Jr. He has adopted Mike Frankovich, U. C. L. A. star athlete, who is now a member of his household. Joe himself makes the By CARLISLE JONES EETING Joe E. Brown at the train, it seems, involves one major problem. You’ve gotta have a gag. : The slightly hysterical young guide from the First National studio explained it all to us on the way to Pasadena station, where the wide-mouthed comedian was to get off the train on his return from New York to start work on his latest picture, “Elmer a the Great,” now showing at the. . “Meeting Joe,’ he said, “is a little different. have a gag.” . . Theatre. You’ve just gotta We had several gags; four of them. Lovely young things from the studio stock company rode to Pasadena with us, garbed in bathing suits, baseball caps and _ overcoats. Another gag was tied to the outside of the car, a gigantic baseball bat, fashioned hurriedly in the studio mill an hour before train time. “It’s a great idea,” explained the guide, rocking with ill-concealed enthusiasm. “It isn’t my gag, but it’s a great idea. You see Joey’s last picture is about swimming, ‘You Said a Mouthful. And his next one is about baseball. So we tie it all up, see, and make pictures. We’ve got girls in bathing suits and _ baseball caps and a big baseball bat. It’s a swell gag.” Always an Event Meeting Joe E. Brown at a train, it turned out, is a little like welcoming a returning senator. There are babies to be kissed (Joe’s own baby) and girls to be hugged (studio girls), and there are cameramen _ galore anxious to photograph the returning hero doing both. Joe E. Brown had been gone four weeks. You would have thought he _ had been away four years. The welcoming party took over the quiet little Pasadena station and turned it. ~~ mom » into a two-ring circus. The family chauffeur arrived with the big, seven passenger sedan, bringing little Mary Elizabeth Ann Brown and her nurse. The four girls took off their overcoats and stood about _ shivering in their abbreviated swimming clothes in order to be ready when the train came. From some secret source the guide produced four regulation baseball bats as well as the big one that had been tied to the side of the car. It was pointed out that while there was no ball to make the illusion complete, neither was there any swimming pool handy to make the costumes seem appropriate. But to all of this he turnea a deaf ear. It was, he insisted, a good gag. In due time the train arrived and Joe E. Brown, preceded, properly enough, by Mrs. Brown, appeared in the door of the Pullman car. Joe E. wore a broad grin, as well as regula tion clothing and a green hat and in his right hand he held a turtle. Had His Own “Gag” “Gosh,” yelled the guide, “Joe’s got a gag of his own.” So he had. Allowing the comedian a scant thirty seconds to greet his family, Joe and the turtle were hustled to a selected spot on the station platform where studio and news service photographers were gathered. Joe’s grin widened in appreciation as we explained the purpose of the four bathing beauties in baseball caps. He deposited the turtle in the arms of an innocent bystander and _ proceeded to register amusement for the cameras. This was temporarily interrupted by the arrival of Joe’s two nearly grown sons, Don and Joe KE. Junior. Meanwhile a crowd had gathered and the innocent bystander was having difficulty with the turtle. Autograph collectors were shoved out of the circle and the girls brought back in. The cameramen fairly flev: about. ‘They suggested this “pe se and that. | They put Joe in the center and the girls around him. They put the girls in the center and Joe, as much as possible, around them. “The light’s going,’ warned the photographers. Out went the girls and in came the turtle, for photographs. “You see,” our guide explained again on the way back to the studio, “meeting Joe E. Brown is a little different. You can’t just go to the train and say ‘Hello, Joe.’” “You’ve gotta have a gag.” Joe’s latest picture, “Elmer the Great,” is based on the rollicking stage success by Ring Lardner and George M. Cohan. There is a strong supporting cast, which includes Patricia Ellis as his leading lady, Frank McHugh, Claire Dodd and Preston S. Foster. The screen play by Tom Geraghty was directed by Mervyn LeRoy. Joe E. Brown Couldn’t Be Funny by Any Other Name HAT’S in a name, anyway; especially in a name like Joe E. Brown? In Hollywood the Smiths become Pickfords, the Ullmans are known as the Fairbanks, but Joe E. Brown stands by the good old moniker of Brown. A brave man who dared fate to down him with a common name and lived to have a laugh on all the name changers in the name-changingest city in the world. All the Smiths and Joneses and Johnsons and Millers should take heart at this. Joe E. Brown, a plain man with a plain name and a plain face who has made good in a city where there are fifteen hundred other Browns in the telephone directory, including five other “Joe Browns” and at least a) Mouthful” hundred “J. Browns.” For that mat-| «mer the ter Joe E. did pretty well in New York, where there must be three or four times as many Browns as there are in Hollywood and Los Angeles. And Joe E. Brown, by any other name, could never be so funny. Not Joseph E. Brown, mind you; nor yet J. Evan Brown; or even J. E. Brown. Just Joey Brown as you say it, Joe E. Brown as it reads in the program. Try to imagine going to see J. Evan Brown in “You Said a or Joseph E. Brown in Great,” his latest First National comedy now showing at the --.«. Lheatre, It doesn’t seem to fit. You can’t say it easily. But Joey Brown slides off your tongue with an ease and dispatch that shows you it is exactly the right moniker for a comedian who wants to make people laugh. Just Grew on Him Just when it was that Joey happened upon the happy contraction of It required only two days to make the scenes for the World Series game that forms the climax of Joe E. Brown’s latest starring comedy for First National, now showing at the .... Theatre. But it took two weeks of waiting for the rain to stop and give the sun a chance to dry out. the field sufficiently to stage any kind of a game on it that wasn’t a water sport. Everything Filmed, but— Several days before the two weeks had elapsed and the last storm had done its worst, Mervyn LeRoy, director of the picture, had finished filming the other sequences in the story. The rest of the picture was safely in the laboratory—and still the rain continued. If it had been just an ordinary World Series game that was to be shot, the game could have been photographed earlier in the picture. It wasn’t just an ordinary game, however. Most of it was to be played during a rainstorm, with the field getting muddier and muddier with each inning. The night before Joe E. Brown and the company was scheduled to move in he Vricleyv ; } i ce + 5.2 JASC Rds. STOURCS at. Field, the rain broke. It was a driving downpour that lasted two days. First National production executives simply revised the schedule and the company continued shooting on the stages at the big Burbank studio. A day of sunshine followed. The field was inspected. “Elmer the Great” called for a muddy field, but not one of the consistency of a good porridge. One more day of sun would harden it enough to go ahead with the game, the studio men agreed. If it didn’t, they’d spray the ball grounds with gasoline and help nature with the drying-out process. Another Storm Nature, however, had another trick up her sleeve. The next day another storm rolled over the mountains from the north—and the best-laid plans of the production office went agley. eo ae peas [= we » “ i ‘0 . It was beginning to get serious. There weren’t many more alternative scenes that LeRoy and his company could shoot. Pretty soon they’d just be standing around waiting for Jupiter Pluvius to take his water-wagon somewhere else and let California and “Elmer the Great” get their heads above water. Finally storm No. 2 ran its course and disappeared. But Wrigley Field was soggier than ever and everyone at the Warner-First National studio knew that it would take at least fortyeight hours to get the grounds into condition, even for a muddy game like the one they had to make. One or two light showers came up and kept the company in suspense, but they could not be said to have made any difference. The last scenes in the picture—except for the baseball game —were shot, everybody was standing by on call, ready to don baseball uniforms and dash out to the field—when a third storm hove in sight, and added another inch and a half of rain to a situation that was already “all wet.” It looked like three strikes and out for “Elmer the Great,” but finally Jupe Pluvius decided, apparently, that Elmer and his World’s Series game Nearly two weeks after the company had been scheduled to go to Wrigley Field for the first time, they actually moved into the ball park, and the members of two teams—professional ball players, and many of them big leaguers with World Series contests to their credit—faced each other on the diamond for the benefit of the cameras. That’s why there was a deep, heartfelt wave of relief and rejoicing at Warner-First National studios when the final scenes of the game in “Elmer the Great” were safely “in the box.” Supporting Joe E. Brown in Tom Geraghty’s screen version of the famous Ring Lardner-George M. Cohan comedy success are Patricia Ellis,’ Preston S. Foster, Frank McHugh, Claire Dodd, Emma Dunn, Russell Hopton and Sterling Holloway. his own name is a little indefinite, even to Joey. It just sort of grew on him because it fitted. There was a time when he seriously considered changing it. That was along about the time he quit the “Five Marvelous Ashtons” because of a broken leg and got ready to go out on his own. He threatened himself momentarily with some such nomenclature as “Marvel Ashton” or even “Ashton Marvel,” and for a few ghastly moments it is said he considered “Richard E. Brownfield” as a possibility. Think of what we were all saved. “Richard E. Brownfield is in ‘You Said a Mouthful’” or “Richard E. Brownfield in ‘Elmer the Great.’” “But no,’ said Joe E. Brown to himself on the auspicious day when he decided to leave well enough alone as far as his name was concerned. “No indeed. The Blythes can be Barrymores and the Stevens can become Stanwycks and the Booths and the Barthelmesses can all keep their high sounding monikers. Ill keep Brown. Joe E. Brown.” There is little truth, then, in the report that Joe got his comical name through the economy of the first New York producer who put that name in lights. There has been a rumor that Joey wanted “Joseph E. Brown” put up on the theatre front even then, but that, because he was fifth on the roster of stars in the show, there were no “p’s” left when it came time to put his name up and so it was shortened to Joe E. Brown. The Real Story At that time Joey didn’t care how they spelled his name just so they spelled it out in lights. He had picked “Joe E.” for a handle long before that eventful morning. They could just have put up the word “Brown” and Joey would have appeared in the show just the same. He was that pleased over seeing the word “Brown” in white lights on Broadway. Does Mrs. Brown Have “Mrs. Joseph E. Brown” on her cards She does not! Is Junior Brown “Joseph E. Brown, Jr.”? He is not! It’s Mr. and Mrs. Joe E. Brown and all the little Browns and they are all proud of it. That’s what’s in a name like Joe E. Brown. He couldn’t be half so funny without it. Joe’s latest picture is a screamingly funny comedy based on the play by Ring Lardner and George M. Cohan. He has a strong supporting cast, which includes Patricia Ellis, Frank McHugh, Claire Dodd and Preston S. Foster. The screen play by Tom Geraghty is directed by Mervyn LeRoy. fourth member of the team, and the other five he’s says he’s going to get, even if he has to adopt them he says. Just so there will be spectators, he adopted a baby girl during the production of the picture. So he now has three cheer leaders in the family, his wife, his own daughter, Mary Elizabeth Ann, and the newly adopted baby, Kathryn Francis. “Elmer the Great” is based on the famous baseball stage epic by Ring Lardner and George M. Cohan. When Joe E. Brown Slid Home Safely The “dirtiest” ball game _ ever played takes place in Joe E. Brown’s latest starring picture for First National, “Elmer the Great,” now showing at the... . Theatre. Not the kind of dirt that would alarm a censor or call for a grand jury investigation, but just good, healthy, earthy dirt—or, to be more exact, mud. The World Series game which constitutes the climax of “Elmer the Great,” taken from the stage hit of Ring Lardner and George M. Cohan, is played in a driving rain and a sea of mud. Every member of the team is mud-splashed from head to foot, but the great, big laugh comes when Joe, as the team’s champion batter, slides home through the mud with the winning run. Joe dove into the mud head first and what a sight he presented | ag Mervyn Le Roy Adept at Comedy and Drama Mervyn LeRoy, who was acclaimed by the National Board of Review for directing one of the finest dramatic productions of 1932, “I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang,” starring Paul Muni, shows his versatility by being quite as adept in the comedy line. His latest picture is Joe E. Brown’s starring vehicle for First National, “Elmer the Great,” which is now showing at the .... Theatre. LeRoy also directed Brown in “Local Boy Makes Good.” In “Elmer the Great,” Patricia Ellis, the talented seventeen-year-old Broadway player, has the leading feminine role. The picture is based on the basball epic of the stage, written by Ring Lardner and George M. Cohan. Giant's Ex-Mascot in Joe E. Brown Comedy Charles Wilson realized a childhood ambition when cast for the role of a baseball scout in Joe E. Brown’s latest First National comedy, “Elmer The Great,” now playing at the.... Theatre. This is the first connection that Wilson has had with baseball since he was mascot for the Giants when he was a boy. At that time he yearned to stand up at the plate and slug out a few or stand in the pitcher’s box and twirl some fast ones. Instead he became an actor who has had a long and successful stage career before entering pictures. “lmer The Great” is based on the baseball epic by Ring Lardner and George M. Cohan. Joe E. Brown Avid Baseball Collector Joe E. Brown has a collection of hundreds of baseballs, scores of baseball bats, and a large assortment of gloves, masks, body protectors and shin guards, as well as about twenty uniforms. z Every one of the baseballs and most of the bats have been autographed by big league players arid presented to Joe, who knows nearly all the baseball players from coast to coast. The 35 big leaguers who played with Joe in the First National picture visited his home to look over Joe’s collection. Page Five iro. ae = BO SRE