Heat Lightning (Warner Bros.) (1934)

Feature St rles Talbot Likes to Fight With Friends m Picture Battles In “Heat Lightning”? As Well As In Practically Every Picture He Appears 66 HOM do I fight?’’ Lyle Talbot asked the question with nonchalance when he heard he was selected for one of the leading roles in the Warner Bros. picture, ‘‘Heat Light ning,’’ now showing at the 5 GG hee ates ae ne a Theatre. His listeners looked askance at the young actor upon hearing his question. ‘Why the surprised looks?’’ he asked. “‘I always have Glenda Farrell Quick on Nifties in ‘Heat Lightning’ to fight in a picture, you know, and I’m naturally a bit curious about whom I’m to do battle with.” Talbot’s statement seems to be quite true, if one takes note of his screen record. In “Love Is A Racket,” “Big City Blues,” “Stranger In Town,” “The Purchase Price,” “The College Coach” and his most recent picture, “Mandalay,” Lyle has had fights. “P’m really a quiet, peaceful sort of a chap,” Lyle said, “but audiences don’t seem to care about that. I’m the ‘heel’ who always gets the fight started. Is there really to be a fight for me to do in ‘Heat Lightning’?” People looked at one another. They smiled. Then, in unison, heads nodded. “You fight!” he was told. “T expected it,’ exclaimed Lyle. “Who?” “Preston Foster,’? came the answer. “Oh, that’s fine,” said the actor in tones of relief. “I know Preston—we’re old friends. You see I always like to know the fellow I’m fighting. It makes it easier. “Now that’s another difference for you between movies and real life. Off the screen one would never fight with an old friend. The real life fight-to-the-death fights are almost always staged between enemies who don’t know each other. “In the movies we always like to have our fights with people we know well. That allows us to get into the spirit of the thing without being afraid that someone’s going to be hurt and foolishly think it was done on purpose.” Like Clark Gable, Lyle made his entry into pictures by playing gangster roles and “heavies”. And further like Gable, Lyle has since graduated to leading man parts, playing opposite such stars as Kay Francis, Ann Dvorak, Carole Lombard and others. Launched into theatrics by “tent show” performance, he later entered stock company work. Several years ago he made a few “shorts” for an eastern motion picture studio and although several screen tests were made, nothing resulted in the way of promises for a screen career. Lyle continued with his stock company work, possessing no special yearning for the cinema world. His company was playing in Dallas, Texas, in February, 1932, when the young man was seen by a talent scout who saw in him potential screen material. The rest is Hollywood history. Within three days he was signed under long term contract with the Warner Bros.-First National Studios and within the short space of less than two years, has soared to a place of high standing in the cinema world. Blame it on the fights if you will, but there’s the case. He’s been fighting right along in every picture and growing more and more popular with the fans with each passing day. In “Heat Lightning,” based on the Broadway stage hit, Lyle is a erook dominated by Foster. Others in the cast include Aline MaeMahon, Ann Dvorak, Ruth Donnelly, Frank McHugh, Glenda Farrell, Theodore Newton and others. Mervyn LeRoy directed. Repeal Puts McHugh On Film Water Wagon Repeal of the 18th Amendment may or may not make souses out of many, but it made a teetotaler out of Frank McHugh. Frank is one of the biggest screen drinkers. In fact, almost every film in which he has played shows him with a synthetic jag. Then, when the repeal came, Frank got a role in “Heat Lightning,’ a Warner Bros. picture which comes to the Theatre on the first time in months the star stays sober throughout the whole course of the picture. But She Admits That In Real Life She Thinks Up Smart Answers Too Late player, is like almost everybody else when it comes GG iver FARRELL, the wise-cracking Warner Bros. to thinking up smart answers. She thinks of them too late. A specialist in stage and screen wise-cracks, Glenda admits to anyone who asks her that the ‘‘nifties’’ have to be put into her mouth by the dialogue writers. ‘‘T always think of the snappy answers on the way home,” explains Glenda. “Or after the subject has been changed and the chance to appear brilliant has gone. “In a word battle, I’m like Sheridan, twenty miles away. But if the world wasn’t full of actresses like me what would the dialogue writers do for a living?” Whether or not there is more modesty than truth in Glenda’s admission, the fact remains that no one young woman could be expected to think up the smart dialogue which she reads into the mierophone..innearly every. picture. “It isn’t important that a player be able to originate comedy,” explains Leon Abrams, famous playwright, who with George Abbott is responsible for Miss Farrell’s smart answers in “Heat Lightning,” which comes to the eeu gcagal ee Theatre on “Tt is necessary, however, that the player be able to sound as though these answers were spontaneous. “Miss Farrell can do that better than most others. Only a person with a real sense of humor and an aptitude for repartee can make smart answers, even with prepared material.” There are others who believe that Miss Farrell’s confessed tardiness with comebacks’ is due to her natural bashfulness more than to a slow tongue or a deliberate wit. Painfully — self-conscious when “on her own” in front of an audience, Miss Farrell, like William Powell, Kay Francis, Richard Barthelmess and many others, Going jrom left to right we find Preston Foster, Lyle Talbot and A Cold Drink in A Hot Setting suffers from a marked inferiority complex which can be more accurately described as bashfulness. Among their intimates and in small and friendly gatherings any one of these is a match for the average “wise-cracker” but before an audience becomes a handy victim for the more ecalloused punster. In “Heat Lightning,” Miss Farrell plays the role of a Reno divorcee who has been through the mill, sees all that there is to see and knows all the answers. She is the traveling companion of Ruth Donnelly, another divorcee, and the two carry on some of the smartest dialogue imaginable. With Frank McHugh and Lyle Talbot they lend a touch of humor to a production that is charged with dramatic action. The picture evolves about the incidents that take place in a desert filling station where the heat is maddening and anything can happen—and does. Practically the entire picture was shot on a single location in the Mojave Desert near Victorville, Calif., where the company spent several weeks making it. A special filling station and auto camp was constructed by Warner Bros. studios for the setting. There is an all star cast headed by Aline MacMahon, others ineluding Ann Dvorak, Preston Foster, Theodore Newton, Willard Robertson and Harry C. Bradley besides those mentioned. Mervyn LeRoy directed. Ann Dvorak. They appear in Warner Bros. comedy-drama “Heat Lightning,”’ now at the Strand. Mat No. 12—20c. A Laugh For Frank McHugh seems to be telling Aline MacMahon the story about the traveling salesman, in this scene from “‘Heat Lightning,”” Warner Bros. comedy-drama of life in the desert, coming to the Strand soon. Mat No. 13—20c. Ann Dvorak’s Elopement One Romance That Sticks Star Plays Diametrically Opposite Part in ‘‘Heat Lightning’ To Own Life Role tation — deserved or not — of being more or less HT tie romances and marriages have the repu fleeting. But there is one Hollywood marriage that seems to be withstanding the wear and tear of time with signal suc cess. Life is still a honeymoon for Ann Dvorak and Leslie Fenton, who became Hollywood’s most discussed couple a year and a half ago when their marriage was announced, and then eclipsed that sensation with a fresh one by “running out on” Hollywood for a round-the-world honeymoon, regardless of careers and contracts. “We're as much in love as ever, if not more so,” Ann smiled happily as she sat on the edge of the swimming pool at their ranch in the San Fernando Valley near the Warner Bros. Studios, while Leslie pulled himself up out of the water in time to add an affirmative smile and nod to his wife’s statement. “And I shall always feel,” she went on, “that it was the year we took off, regardless of consequences, to devote to getting acquainted and finding out how to live and be happy together that is responsible for the continuation of our happiness. “Some people elope to get married,” Ann continued. “Leslie and I eloped all right, but we only did it to avoid a public wedding. We had gone over the matter of marriage thoroughly and the elopement was not a matter of the spur of the moment.” As a matter of fact Ann and Leslie carried on a _ whirlwind courtship while playing together in “The Strange Love of Molly Louvain.” Ag soon as they had finished work in the picture they took a plane to Yuma, Arizona, where they were married. “At the time we both felt that making a success of our marriage was the most important thing we had to do,” said Ann. “The results of our year abroad together have proved that we were right. “We gained something that might otherwise have been lost or missed. And the chance to become a Warner Bros. star, which was offered me at that time and which I put aside then, hadn’t been sacrificed, I discovered when we came back to Hollywood. It had only been postponed, thanks to the understanding attitude of the studio executives. “The chance is still there. When it comes again, I am sure I shall be more ready for it than I would have been before. I’ve learned a great many things I didn’t know then. And though I may have to wait some time for that starring opportunity to come again, I’d rather be waiting for it, happy with my husband, than be a star today, at the possible cost of another matrimonial shipwreck to be added to those that are strewn along the coasts of Hollywood.” Ann’s eyes flashed as she made this declaration and she looked proudly over at her husband. Leslie Fenton edged close to her and put his arm around her with a bridegroom’s enthusiasm as he flashed a grin. “We’re not bragging,’ he said, “but we worked the problem out together, counting the possible cost on both sides, and I think we have a right to feel that it would take more than Hollywood or anything it stands for to pry us apart now.” Those who will see Ann Dvorak’s work in “Heat Lightning,” her new Warner Bros. picture which comes to the........ Theatre on predicting that stardom is just around the corner for the slender, dark-haired girl. Contrary to her own love life, Ann plays the part of a girl who trusts too well and is cheated in love in “Heat Lightning,” which is an emotional drama of life centering about a desert gas station where anything can happen and plenty of thrilling incidents do. The screen play by Brown Holmes and Warren Duff is based on the play by Leon Abrams and George Abbott, and is a centralized picture of the desert in its tropical heat, as intense in its emotional outbursts as “Rain.” Aline MacMahon heads a strong cast which includes Lyle Talbot, Glenda Farrell, Preston Foster, Frank McHugh, Ruth Donnelly and Theodore Newton. Mervyn LeRoy directed. Page Five