Flowing Gold (Warner Bros.) (1940)

CURRENT PUBLICITY — ‘FLOWING GOLD’ Garfield Is Like That [ady Barber Gets He'll Go Back To The Stage Once In A While Even If Plays Flop Back in Hollywood after more or less profitable engagements on the Broadway and Chicago stages are John Barrymore, Paul Muni, Fredric March and John Garfield. They had various measures of success. Barrymore stuck tongue in cheek and ad libbed himself right back to HolTeverwe0.0'ds., where, with tongue still deeper in profile, he’s doing "The Great Profile.” Paul Muni made no money but the critics liked him. Fredric March did all right. None of these people, according to their recent statements, wants to go back to Broadway. They'll stay in Hollywood and make pictures—and glad of the chance. Broadway, somehow, wasn’t as satisfactory as they Mat 108—15c thought it might be. None, that is, except Garfield—whose play didn’t succeed at all. Garfield, who has had an extraordinary life, insists upon being extraordinary about this. In the first place, he has just bought a home in San Fernando Valley, plans to make his permanent home in California and motion pictures his chief career. But nothing in the world, apparently, is going to prevent him from doing a stage play now and then. His flop was called “Heavenly Express.” “I’ve wanted to do that play for seven years,” he said. “It was the kind of play that had to be done. Somebody had to do it. “It was interesting and I learned a great deal. I’m glad I did it and I’d do it again.” According to Garfield’s new arrangement with Warner Bros., he’ll be permitted to do four plays during the next six years. His newest picture is “Flowing Gold,” at the Strand, in which he appears with Pat O’Brien and Frances Farmer. He is scheduled for several more including “East of the River.” Farmer's Daughter Does Alright in Hollywood! When Miss Josephine Doaques wins her state popularity contest or Miss Rosebud Butterfinger becomes Apple Blossom Queen, admiring friends and aunts tell her she ought to be in pictures. Maybe she ought, but the percentage of local beauty and popularity winners who get to Hollywood is woefully small. There seems to be a jinx. Most of them who come adventuring to California end up serving hamburgers in drive-in joints. There are exceptions. There was Ginger Rogers, whose cute knees won a Charleston contest in Texas and sent her on her way. And there’s Frances Farmer, now being starred opposite John Garfield and Pat O’Brien in “Flowing Gold” at the Strand Theatre. Frances won a popularity contest in Seattle, but that, as they say, aint the half of it. The trick seems to have been to get as far away from Hollywood as_ possible, and Frances certainly did that. She went to Europe, not knowing that she was really on the way to Hollywood. There was a gentleman on the boat named Dr. George Gladstone. He saw our Frances silhouetted in the moonlight against a Pacific night at sea, and murmured, “That girl ought to be in pictures.” Upshot of that was that Dr. Gladstone wrote to Shepard Traube, and Shepard Traube arranged a sereen test, and Frances passed it and signed with Paramount. She had some background for acting, having worked her way through the University of Washington as a dramatic coach, movie usher, radio artist, and tutor. Her natural equipment consists of hazel eyes, five feet and six inches of curvaceous figure, and reddish blonde hair. And she can sing. Actors Are People Too by Pat O’Brien (Currently starring in ‘Flowing Gold’ at the Strand) I like people—lots of people. That includes actors. As a lot they are the finest group of people in the world, the most generous, the most patient, unswervingly loyal to their friends, their profession and their public. The first professional actor I ever met was Jimmie Gleason. The Marquette University Dramatic Club was “touring the world”— a very limited world not far removed from my home town of Milwaukee. Jimmie happened to drop in during one performance. He said “Hello” to me after the performance and added the most persuasive words I have ever heard: “Drop in and see me if you’re ever in New York.” But I had no intention of being an actor then. In any event, I soon tired of torts and con Mat 109—15c tracts and common law. I had set out to be a lawyer because my father and mother had always thought their son should be one. After a family conference, our plans were changed and I entered the Sargent School of Drama. My first discovery that ‘‘actors are people” came when I took Jimmie Gleason at his word and asked him for a job not long after I was out of the Sargent School. He remembered his implied promise, which wasn’t really a promise at all, and got me a place with his stock company. I learned quickly about actors from then on. I must name Spencer Tracy as a classic example of actorfriendship. I lived with him for a time in a New York hall bedroom for which we paid $5 a week when we could scrape $5 together. And there is Frank McHugh, as regular a guy as ever forgot to take his grease paint off at night. There is Jimmy Cagney, with whom I’ve worked in more pictures than there are fingers on my hands. He stacks up, in my estimation, as among “the best people” in any list. Her Man in Strand’s Flowing Gold’ Whether a business woman can have a proper love life is something novelists like to write about in career vs. marriage serials. Business usually loses out. But when the _ business woman happens to be a lady barber she has certain definite advantages. You'll find her in “Flowing Gold,” a story of the oil fields starring John Garfield, Pat O’Brien and Frances Farmer, currently showing at the Strand. She’s Tillie, the lady barber, real name Jody Gilbert, heart throb of Hot Rocks Harris, real name Cliff Edwards. The boys are getting set for a stomp-down dance at the local bar and Hot Rocks comes into the barber shop to get prettified. He slumps into the chair and sings out: “Make it snappy—lI got a date with rootin’ tootin’ cutie tonight what’s gonna stand the boys on their ears. Say, when she walks in on that dance there’s gonna be a riot and I aint presumin’ ”’, A large hand reaches through the door, preceding an enormous woman. It’s Tillie, She’s about the size of Kate Smith. She grabs a razor. She speaks: “So you got a date with a rootin’ tootin’ cutie—you doublecrossin’ two-timin’ oil-soaked Casonover !” Tillie brandishes the razor. “Promise to marry me and run out on me, willya? You onecylinder gigilo! No one can trample with my affections and get away with it.” Hot Rocks shrinks down into the chair. “Boys,” he says, “boys, I want you to meet my fiancee.” When it comes to combining love and business, lady barbers have a definite advantage. weakly Raymond Walburn Cashed in Bad Luck Raymond Walburn, currently playing a typical role as the glib, fast-talking oil promoter in “Flowing Gold” for Warner Bros., is a towering example of a man who turned adversity into triumph. Eighteen years ago, he scraped together $1000 with which to get married. But just a week before his date at the church, he ended up, quite abruptly, at the wrong end of a deal in the wheat market that was “sure” to triple his investment “inside of thirty days.” He had been a romantic lead on the stage up to that point, but shortly later when casting began for the main role in a play called “Gilding the Lily,” he felt sure he could play it—the part of a slick “con” man. All he had to do was remember his late, very much absentee, partner. It worked, and he’s been collecting on it ever since. Hollywoodians Honest, Says Director Green Hollywood is the most honest town in the world, or has weak eyesight — or maybe Alfred Green just happens to be one of the luckiest of people. Green, who directed “Flowing Gold” now at the Strand, had need of $1,500 cash over the week-end. He made a hurried trip to his bank on Saturday, got the money in twenty dollar bills, stuffed it into a pants pocket, and hurried to keep a date. He parked his car just off of gone for three hours. When he returned his $1,500 was lying scattered on the front seat. “It must have been in plain sight of at least a thousand passersby,’’ Green said. [is ] Elmo Lincoln, the screen’s first Tarzan and a reigning star of the D. W. Griffith era of 20 years ago, started his career all over again at 50. While working as an ordinary extra in “Flowing Gold,” Lincoln, now 50, revealed that he had just enrolled in the Kosloff school of drama, and will study elocution and diction along with kids as young as 16 who aspire to a screen career. Oddly enough, the physique which gained him the cognomen of “the human Atlas” is still put to use, for he was required to carry 170-pound Pat O’Brien across the mud-sloshed streets of a Texas oil boom town in the character of a “walking taxi.” * * * “Be yourself” is a very common admonishment in Hollywood, but Virginia Sale lives in dread of ever hearing it from a director. For the actress, currently in “Flowing Gold” at the Strand, has been characterizing other people all her life on the stage and screen, and fears she hasn’t the faintest idea in the world about how she would go about playing herself. The niece of the late famous comedian, Chic Sale, she got her start in her home town of Urbana, IIll., mimicking the local characters at school shows and benefits. Now she is on call at the studio casting offices for a list of 23 distinct characters, ranging from a giddy society debutante of 16 to a gangster’s moll and a great-great grandmother of 88. * * * Convinced the world situation will result in a definite back-tothe-earth movement, John Garfield revealed he’d acquired an option to buy a 300-acre farm near Lake Bomboeen in the Green Mountains of Vermont. The star, currently in “Flowing Gold” at the Strand, also is planning to build a home here in the San Fernando valley, and this will be the first time that this real life ‘dead end” kid has ever lived in a house of his own. * * * Ida Lupino says she has wanted to do a picture with John Garfield ever since she saw him in “Four Daughters.” Garfield says that wish—in reverse—goes double with him since he’s seen Miss Lupino in “They Drive By Night.” Which makes it nice for Warner Bros. which has them both under contract. * % * Meeting Reginald Sheffield on the “Flowing Gold” set at Warner Bros., Pat O’Brien greeted him with a “hello pop.” Sheffield’s two sons, Johnny and Billy, played O’Brien as a boy in “Knute Rockne-All American.” CURRENT SHORTS Still FG30; Mat 211—30c THE BARBER IS A LADY —Jody Gilbert wields a wicked razor on her somewhat worried client, Tom Kennedy while Cliff (‘Ukelele Ike’) Edwards waits his turn in this comedy scene from “Flowing Gold” at the Strand, Jody Gilbert, whose hilarious scene in “Flowing Gold” comes when she slaps a hot towel on Cliff Edward and scrapes his jowls with a dull razor, says she is in pictures today because in Texas she was a little fat girl. “Yep, and I’m still a big gal,” says Jody, who hefts at about Kate Smith tonnage. “But when I was a little girl in Texas and our dancing teacher gave recitals, she let all the other kids dance—but me. She stuck me out front to say a funny piece. The audiences rather liked it, a little fat girl in pigtails. So that’s how I became an actress.” * oo * William Marshall, Warner Bros. effervescent young romantic discovery, enthusiastically went out and bought himself two new sports outfits, one business suit, a tuxedo and full dress outfit after being notified he was set for his first important role in “Flowing Gold,” starring John Garfield, Pat O’Brien and Frances Farmer. Sore indeed was his distress when he got his script and found that throughout the picture all he wore was a battle-scarred pair of corduroy pants, a torn blue work-shirt and a weatherworn pith helmet. * * * In the days of the “flapper” generation, the older folks used to shake their heads sadly and protest that “nothing any good” would ever come of the thousands of young ukelele “bugs.” But Cliff ‘“Ukelele Ike” Edwards, currently in “Flowing Gold” at the Strand, and the man who started it all, has proof to the contrary. He just received a letter from Wilbur Walsh, of Buffalo, one of his main disciples of “the poor man’s banjo” in the old days, that he has been elevated to head the “Elixir: fly spray company.” * * Bill Marshall, Warner contract player who is_ being groomed for stardom, plans to make his permanent home in Hollywood. On the set of “Flowing Gold,” currently at the Strand, Marshall told friends that he had sent for his one year old Irish Setter, Baron Gore the Second, who is in Louisville, Kentucky. The dog’s father won the championship of England and United States in his class. Marshall’s dog is insured for $1,000. % % % Cliff Edwards spied Frances Farmer in a fluffy organdie dress silhouetted against brilliant sunshine on the “Flowing Gold” set at the Warner Ranch. Cliff’s reverent tribute was this: “Ah, me, behold God’s gift to young men with grateful eyes.”