Ever in My Heart (Warner Bros.) (1933)

Current I —— WHEN STRONGEST LOVE IS TRIED Ralph Bellamy, Otto Kruger and Barbara Stanwyck in a dynamic scene, packed with emotion in “Ever In My Heart” at the Strand. Cut No.40 Out 30c Mat 10c Barbara Stanwyck Is Most Popular With Studio Help Those Who Know Her Intimately Tear Away Her Reserve Side and Reveal She’s a “Softie’’ N Hollywood, where yesterday’s office boy is tomorrow’s producer, Barbara Stanwyck will always have a job in pictures if she wants one. She is certain to be the most popular ac tress in the world when this crop of potential executives now growing up in the business come into power. She would probably win any popularity contest conducted among messenger boys, wardrobe and makeup people, prop boys and electricians and the other unsung heroes of production. There are at least four people who are almost delirious in their championship of the quiet little actress. They seem to agree that Jim Tully is the only interviewer who has ever done her justice. For story p urposes these four people are: Wardrobe Mary, Hairdresser Helen, Electrician Edgar and an assistant prop boy who must go unnamed for the reason that the good turn Barbara did him during the filming of “Ever In My Heart,” the Warner Bros. picture now showBRR S OG SURG: Sosctcectvssis senesced Theatre, could be altogether undone by mention of his name. BARBARA STANWYCK Out No.1 Cut 15e Mat 5c It was that good turn that brought the prop boy from mere admiration to near-worship of Miss Stanwyck. He had worked very hard and very diligently on the picture and late one Saturday night, when the company was to work until daylight on “night sequences” he did a very foolish thing. He returned to the set after the midnight supper somewhat intoxicated. | Saved His Job | But Miss Stanwyck was tired too and she knew that the prop boy had been even more tired than she was. She knew that he would be discharged immediately if his condition were discovered and that he Page Hight a ee ee ee —and his family—needed the money he was earning. “T’ve heard people say she is hard and cynical. If they only knew that what she really is, is sensitive, so sensitive and so afraid of being hurt that she has built a protecting shell around herself.” Wardrobe Mary and Hairdresser Helen are alike in these views. She is a person who works at high tension and under an enormous emotional strain. She loses about seven pounds in weight during the making of an average picture. Because she is small to start with— much smaller incidentally than she was when she first came to Hollywood, her co-workers in pictures worry some about her health while she is making a picture. | Not Understood | “So few people understand her— and she is so grand.” Helen recalls that Barbara refused to go home for a rest during one of the hottest afternoons of the past summer when it was quite obvious that she needed to gather strength for a difficult and emotional scene in “Ever In My Heart” which was to be filmed that night. Mary and Helen couldn’t understand why Barbara wouldn’t go home. Finally, when they insisted, she explained. Her cook, she said, was ill when she had left the house that morning and she had told her to go to bed and stay in bed all day. She knew that if she went home unexpectedly in the middle of the aftarnoon, that the cook would get up and cook her dinner. “And she is sicker than I am,” explained Barbara. She stayed at the studio. Naturally the kindness is not all one sided. Much is returned to the actress by those who know and love her. So she sent him on an errand to the far end of the lot—to a place where he would meet no one. And she kept sending him back there for unnecessary things until the effects of the liquor had worn off, and she had saved the boy his job. With Electrician Edgar it is diferent, His name isn’t Edgar but it might as well be. When he learned that Miss Stanwyck had adopted a red-headed baby boy whom she had named Dion, he confided in her that he and his wife hoped to adopt a child someday too. Studio executives find Barbara Stanwyck a little difficult to talk to. Electricians and others are in the habit of confiding family secrets into her sympathetic ear. Barbara, in her own quiet way, investigated the status of the electrician and decided that he and his wife would make good parents. Then she added her endorsement to the legal request she suggested the electrician make to the proper authorities. The electrician has his baby and Barbara Stanwyck has _ another champion who is almost inarticulate in his devotion to her. Wardrobe Mary doubles up her capable fists and wants to fight when she hears or reads things about Barbara which she believes to be unjust. “If they only knew her,” she explains, “as I know her. She is the sweetest thing. I know of dozens —hundreds of things that she has done for others. But you’d never know it from her—or from me, either, because she wouldn’t like to hvae me tell, | To Save Her Weight | Recently they joined in a conspiracy to try to prevent her loss of weight. The prop man on the picture—not the one whose job she saved—had been supplying Barbara with a “Frosted Chocolate” each hot afternoon. They were made with skim milk and flavoring according to a recipe furnished by Barbara herself. One day she remarked that frosted chocolates had a different taste. She queried the prop man and he finally confessed that he had purposely been making them with cream and adding a forbidden scoup of ice cream, hoping that this would prevent her loss of weight. “We take the best care we can of her,” explains Wardrobe Mary. Every person who works with her takes a personal interest in her. “Some folks think she’s hard,” says Wardrobe Mary. “They don’t know her. She’s a softie really. She’s grand!” And her character role in “Ever In My Heart” is like Barbara herself. Almost always she has played vamp parts or bad women. But now she has a role in which she could be herself. That is a protective shell on the outside and a “softie” inside. She doesn’t start out with a protective shell in the picture. She is a happy New England girl brought up in luxury. But she marries a German professor and when the war breaks out she suffers untold cruelties at the hands of her former friends. Gradually she draws herself into a protective shell. But her real self has never changed as is shown when the crucial test comes. | | The story by Beulah Marie Dix and Bertram Milhauser is a beautiful romance but cne fraught with powerful emotional conflicts, Otto Kruger, the noted stage star, has the leading masculine role while others in the cast include Ralph Bellamy, Ruth Donnelly, Laura Hope Crews and Frank Albertson. It was directed by Archie Mayo. Took Otto Kruger's 308th Play to Win Recognition Noted Stage Star Then Won Important Roles Opposite Stanwyck in “Ever in My Heart’’ TTO KRUGER, the man who fooled Hollywood! : After appearing in 307 stage roles, Otto Kruger, whose ‘name is synonomous with Broadway, had to do one more play to convince filmland that he had the real stuff. However, that extra role did the trick, and now after a year in which he worked in but two pictures, Otto Kruger is surprised to find himself one of the most sought-after actors in Hollywood. It took a year to ‘‘discover’’ him, but he’s finally on his way to duplicate on the screen the brilliant record he made on the American stage. This case is one of the most intresting in the annals of the film capitol. Kruger, after 25 years of stage success, was finally signed to a long term motion picture contract and brought to Hollywood. However, instead of starting to work immediately, he was allowed to remain idle. Stories were bought and originals were written, but none of the starring roles seemed to fit the newcomer. | Paid Regularly | Finally tiring of the inactivity, although the pay-checks continued to come in with regularity, Kruger obtained permission to appear in the stage hit “Counsellor at law” at a Hollywood theatre, having in his possession the West Coast rights to|""~ the New York success in which Paul Muni had starred. When Kruger finished his initial performance on the opening night, he literally bowed himself into the beginning of a screen career, for his flawless acting on the stage had opened the industry’s eyes to his ability. From then on he was in demand by every major studio in the business. Warner Bros. beat the other movie producers to it and signed up Kruger for “Ever In My OTTO KRUGER Well known stage star supports Barbara Stan wyck in Warner Bros. ““Ever in My Heart” now at the Strand. Heart.” Out No.9 Outi5e Mat ic In his role opposite Barbara Stanwyck in “Ever In My Meart,” now showing-at. the —...p sacs: Theatre,| screen, Kruger, nevertheless, had Kruger established himself as one of the leading players of the screen. His role is that of a naturalized German scholar who is living very happily in America at the outbreak of the war. As patriotic frenzy mounted in the days of 1914, so does Kruger’s screen life become unbearable. The part packs dramatic intensity, demands consummate ability, and proved the stage actor’s acid cinema test, which he passed with flying colors. Realizing that a motion picture background of but two pictures hardly authorized him to draw a comparison between the stage and RALPH BELLAMY served Barbara Stanwyck. some decidedly novel observations to make. “The screen will never equal the stage as a medium of expression, in my opinion, until it rids itself of its mechanical aspect,” he said to Director Archie Mayo. “The world of make-believe which envelops a screen actor, or at least it does me, during production, hardly tends to create a feeling of reality. The props, lights, cameras, people standing around and other minor things combine to “cheat” a performer. Especially so when contrasted to the theatre where you have a personal contact and play to an audience, catering to crowd psychology through the intenseness of one’s performance.” | Still New to Him | “That feeling, I think, is due to the newness of it all to you,” ob“Practically every stage veteran feels the same about it when they make their first pictures. new suit. the feeling of self-conscidusness, you It’s like trying on a After you have overcome won’t notice the things you now sense.” And Mr. Kruger let it go at that, although he will admit that he never has made a scene on the stage seem more real than those in which he appears with Miss Stanwyck in “Ever In My Heart.” The picture is one of powerful emotions which might easily have seemed forced if enacted by players of less talent than Miss Stanwyck and Kruger. Beulah Marie Dix and Bertram Milhauser have created a story of rare beauty, power and genuine pathos in “Ever In My Heart,” which Milhauser dramatized for the screen... Others in the cast include Ralph Bellamy, Ruth Donnelly, Laura Hope Crews and Frank Albertson. Supporting Bari:ara Stan wyck in Warner Bros. “Ever in My Heart, now at Strand Theatre. Out No.11 Outide Mat se