Expensive Husbands (Warner Bros.) (1937)

newspaper feature. tor. Sad was the lot of Laurine Lynn, So young, so rich, so rare, In pictures she was a mighthave-been, So to Vienna she went in despair. Truth will out! and in this case it shows That our hero’s no musician nor waiter, Now we venture to say that of all her beaux, The Prince is the one who will mate her. “Zo, it’s my title you want”, said he with malice, “Sure”, said the girl, “I’m not slow”, "My name, then, is yours, so come to my palace, And please bring plenty of dough”. Page Sia This two column layout is an interesting Available in mat form with type. Order from Campaign Plan Edi“Mat EXP No. 201-B.” Price 30e. The City of Dreams soon made her forget, The trick fate had used to deflate her, In Vienna, you see, girls never fret When meeting a handsome waiter. Deceitful cad! he’s a musician at heart, This news will surely floor her, An odds-onfavorite was he from the start, So he’ll end up the season’s high scorer. So Hollywood’s chimes ne’er again will peal, For Miss Lynn has given her hand, And the Prince will give his much) cherished seal In return for ten hundred grand. Fueourre ity. (Opening Day) NEW ROMANGE TEAM COMES 10 STRAND IN COMEDY TODAY A new team of romantic screen lovers—in the persons of Beverly Roberts and Patrice Knowles — comes to the Strand Theatre today in a comedy of gay life in Hollywood and in the Old World, turned out by Warner Bros. under the title of ‘‘Expensive Husbands.’’ The blonde, tousled-haired Beverly and the tall, dark, handsome Pat (recently from the London stage) are said to make excellent foils for each other, and if this picture makes all the success that previewers predicted for it, they will most likely be teamed up again shortly. Beverly plays the part of a movie-actress whose popularity is waning because she’s been given some poor pictures to work in. She feels that a big publicity smash will bring her back to the hearts of her admirers, so she goes to Hurope with the deliberate purpose of buying a titled husband, no matter how expensive he may prove. She buys Pat, naturally — but has no end of difficulties before they get matters straightened out between them. Also with important parts in the story are Gordon Oliver as a rich socialite who wants to wed Beverly, and Allyn Joslyn as her picturesque press agent. Bobby Connolly directed ‘‘ Expensive Husbands’’ from a screen play by Lillie Hayward, Jean Negulesco and Jay Brennan. ~ STARS STAND-IN GETS CHANCE AT REAL MOVIE ROLE It’s about the rarest thing in pictures — next to becoming a star from the extra ranks — to get a screen chance when you’re a stand-in, Recently, however, pretty blonde Jane Grant won that chance. Jane was stand-in for Beverly Roberts in the Warner Bros. comedy ‘‘ Expensive Husbands,’’ which is now showing at the Strand Theatre. She got her chance to become a film actress because Beverly is playing the role of a movie star. It didn’t follow that just because scenes were filmed showing both the star and her stand-in working before the cameras, the real stand-in would enact the part of the stand-in created by the story authors. Jane, however, is a qualified member of the actor’s organization, a very pretty girl, and possesses some stage experience. She had won her stand-in job through sereen tests for acting roles. So director Bobby Connolly decided on using the real stand-in to play the part. Quite an elaborate film set was filmed within the regular on2 in ‘“Expensive Husbands.’’ While Beverly plays the star and Jane the stand-in, and of course several other actors play actors, the cameramen, director and so on naturally aren’t enacted by real cameramen and directors. In the scene with the star, stand-in and others, are Patric Knowles and Gordon Oliver — mere visitors who are watching movies made, although both are Beverly’s suitors in the story. It’s an odd kind of movie! Mat 2vi—svuc FOR SALE — A HUSBAND! She bought him at a bargain and paid for him in installinents that almost broke her heart. Beverly Roberts and Patrice Knowles are currently co-starred in ‘“Hapensive Husbands,’’ a Warner Bros. comedy, at the Strand Theatre. (Current) Intimate Musicals Best Says Director Connolly The late Florenz Ziegfeld’s favorite girl-show director, Bobby Connolly, now a movie director, doesn’t attempt to stage a “Follies” every time he makes a picture, He waits for a good excuse, and even when one such as his current Warner Bros. picture, “Expensive Husbands,’ comes along, he uses some restraint. He doesn’t believe in gigantic floral patterns or whirly-gigs made with beautiful girls. He does believe in the girls themselves, however — thinks intimate glimpses of them help a picture. “Expensive Husbands” is now showing at the Strand Theatre. “We’ve progressed from the conventionalized, geometric drill ‘parades of feminine pulchritude to something warmer and more intimate — candid camera studies,’ Connolly declares. “Ideally, that’s what all motion pictures should be — candid views of life, rather than posed, artificial symbols of it.” So Connolly, who only this year became a full-fledged movie director but formerly was one of the movie industry’s most highly paid dance directors, filmed “Ex Mat 101—15c ALLYN JOSLYN — The wisecracking newspaper reporter of “*They Won’t Forget’’ is back as an even wiser press agent in ‘‘ Eapensive Husbands,’’ now showing at the Strand Theatre. pensive Husbands” intimately and truthfully. The picture concerns the adventures of Beverly Roberts as a movie star whose popularity shows signs of fading until she marries a prince, Patric Knowles, for publicity’s sake. Hence Con-. ~~ nolly’s “candid. camera’? ™=methads ~~ have unusual opportunities for proving their worth. “T’ve often thought it’s odd that stories of Hollywood locale were not filmed more realistically,” Connolly remarks. “Their makers surely know their own industry, its people, its social life. But evidently they try to show Hollywood not as it is, but as they think outsiders believe it is. I prefer to show it as it is; there is more color and glamour here, and more warm human interest than those who portray it artificially can conjure up out of imagination.” Showmanship evolves by a “the hen or the egg” process, according to Connolly. That is, it changes as public taste changes, but whether its own experiments and ventures into new fields changes public taste gradually, or public taste is the moving force which changes showmanship, is like guessing which is first — the hen or the egg. The important fact is that changes do oecur and wise showmen recognize them. “TI came from Broadway into talkies when talkies were young, bearing with me a healthy awe of the flickers,” Connolly says. “When I got into the studios I discovered that at that time, the movie folk had an equal awe of all that pertained to the stage, particularly the musical comedy stage. They tried to make movies too much like stage musical comedies, and thereby threatened for a time to kill off the ‘musical’ altogether. “HWven today there is far too much unwarranted musical material in many pictures. I can use a little in ‘Expensive Husbands’ because the movies do use musical stuff. Well used, it is tremendously valuable. Badly used, music, singing and dancing interludes in the progress of a film plot are actually detrimental, actually rob the film of popularity it might have achieved had no musie at all been included.” a