Heat Lightning (Warner Bros.) (1934)

Baa | Carture Stories Aline MacMahon Can’t Go to N.Y. So It Comes to Her Leading Player In ‘Heat Lightning” Finds Eastern Friends Are Drifting To Hollywood LINE MaecMAHON doesn’t miss New York in HollyA wood. This resourceful actress, who is slated for stardom at Warner Bros. studios, made many friendships during her several seasons on the New York stage. for a great deal with Aline. fined by no means to the stage and the screen. books, architecture, sculpture — she has a deep and well-informed interest in all of them. Aline MaeMahon’s friends represent these interests. In New York it was her habit to see and hear much of them, since her special circle was made up of men and women outstanding in the arts and the _ professions. Her first visit or two to Hollywood were for one picture only. Each time she traveled to the coast she made that single picture and then decamped for home. To her that was a thoroughly satisfactory routine. She was never gone for long. When finally she was offered a long term contract, she hesitated. Yes, she was one who really did. At length she put her pen to paper but she did so with reluctance. She wasn’t sure, not at all sure, how she was going to like it. What about her friends? How could she keep in touch with them at a distance of three thousand miles? It was on them that she depended for much of the stimulus and diversity of her life. Wasn’t Hollywood an intellectual desert? She had heard so. On her brief visits formerly she had always been too busy to find out. But _that seemed to be the world’s opinion. She came to Hollywood to live — but with serious misgivings. Aline needn’t have worried — as she soon found out for her self. Her first year in Hollywood was revealing. Not only did she make many contacts which were stimulating, but New York friends began to appear on the coast for one reason or another. So many appeared, in fact, and with such regularity that Hollywood soon seemed as much like home as home itself. Now, in her second “contract year” for Warner Bros., she thinks it seems more so. There are many ex-New Yorkers in her present circle of friends. Two old co-workers from the New York stage, Kenneth MacGowan, now an executive, and Robert Edmond Jones, noted scene designer with their wives, are in the group. There is David Hertz, playwright, a friend from Broadway; there is George O’Neill, author of “American Dream,” and Ralph Block, another writer. Dorothy Peterson and her husband are often at Aline’s Brentwood home. Others arrive from the east from time to time, and always they seek out Aline. Even when she spent two weeks in the desert recently, on location for “Heat Lightning,” the picture now showing at the Skeets sic Bee iy Weaken Theatre, with Aline in the leading role, she was not exiled. Three friends from New York, just come to Hollywood for movie work, drove out to spend the week-end at the same Victorville ranch where the “Heat Lightning” unit was quartered. Aline has made several trips back to New York during the past two years. <A change of scene between pictures is important to her. But she has made one dis covery just as important. In Hollywood she doesn’t miss New York. New York — at least as much as she has time for — is right there. In her current picture “Heat Friends count Her tastes are wide — conPainting, Couldn’t See Heat Lightning Flashes The Warner Bros. company while on location in the Mojave Desert making “Heat Lightning,” a pieture which comes to the iMhieaitrer sorte be ei ctrl aha ; almost didn’t see the heat lightning for the flashes. Prepared for the sort of lightning most of them knew from east to west, the almost continuous flashes of soft, white light without thunder, fooled them. “What is it?” MacMahon. None of the other players ineluding Ann Dvorak, Preston Foster, Lyle Talbot and Glenda Farrell knew. But Mervyn LeRoy the director, solved the mystery. “That’s what our story is asked Aline about — heat lightning,’ he said. “But where’s the lightning?” the mystified players asked. “That’s all there is, there isn’t any more,’ said LeRoy. Heat lightning makes no jagged flash of light across the sky as does other lightning. It’s just a sudden flash of whiter light which comes and goes as if someone: had turned on a big electric globe somewhere over the mountains. It is caused when the colder bodies of gas, or air, which lie over the ocean or mountains rush suddenly on the warm bodies of air lying over the desert. The clash of the different temperatures makes the light. That’s heat lightning—and the story, a drama of desert love and desert hate that flare in the maddening heat. Tailors Fly To Desert To Outfit LeRoy When Mervyn LeRoy finished shooting “Heat Lightning,” the Warner Bros. picture now at the Paes “ate Theatre, the wardrobe for a very important trip to him was ready although he was on location with his company in the heart of the New York desert. The important trip, of course, was his wedding journey around the world with Doris Warner, whom he married in New York last January. How to get that important wardrobe, and still make the pieture with a desert location was solved by his tailor, who sent the clothes out to him for fittings. Representatives of the shop went back and forth by plane. Lightning,” Miss MaeMahon has the role of a former cabaret dancer, who has sought sanctuary in the desert. The picture is based on the Broadway stage success, “Heat Lightning,” which is a thrilling drama of desert love. There is a talented supporting cast which includes Ann Dvorak, Preston Foster, Lyle Talbot, Glenda Farrell, Frank McHugh, Ruth Donnelly and Theodore Newton. TTYL LTLLLLLEU LLL LLL Desert Silence Keeps Aline MacMahon Awake When Aline MacMahon, Warner Bros. player, lived on the corner of 6th Avenue and 45th Street in New York City, the “El” went right by her window— and she never heard it. But the two trains that passed through the middle of the Mojave Desert each night, when she was making “Heat Lightning,” the picture now showing at the silt Le a Theatre, woke her up regularly. “They’re eerie,” she says. “They remind you of things. And, of course, after the trains have gone by, there is that terrific desert stillness. It’s so quiet that you can’t sleep.” Happy ant That’s the only way we can de scribe Aline MacMahon in this scene from “Heat Lightning’, which is now at the Strand. Mat No. 9—10c. Friends In Real Life Enemies On Screen All through the Warner Bros. picture, “Heat Lightning,” which comes sto them. 3 seg ca ee Theatre OUR. eV oie, , Glenda Farrell and Ruth Donnelly are supposed to be at swords-point with each other. “That’s the movies for you,” said Glenda. “Ruth is one of my best friends off the screen and here I am pretending all day that I hate her!” Plane Keeps Actors In Touch With Studio The Warner Bros. movie company, marooned on the Mojave Desert, where they spent two weeks making scenes for “Heat Lightning,” which comes to the ee a eietattc: | Pena aa Reet Theatre on Ri gee dls Fane eis a ,» kept in touch with the studios by an airplane which made two trips’ to and from the camp daily. The location in the desert was more than 100 miles from the studio and too far for the players to make the trip each day. So they settled down on a dude ranch nearby while the plane brought in perishable foods, newspapers and other necessities. The plane also took to the studio the daily rushes so executives could keep in contact with the work and carried back new film for the day’s shooting. “Heat Lightning’. is a dramatic story of desert love and desert hate with Aline MaeMahon, Ann Dvorak, Preston Foster and Lyle Talbot in the principal roles. Tries To Sell Gas To Film Filling Station Aline MacMahon was trying to cool herself between scenes when shooting on location in the Mojave desert for “Heat Lightning,” a Warner Bros. picture which comes to the Theatre on The setting was an improvised movie filling station. A young man drove up and demanded to know who was the boss. To save argument, Aline told him she was. Thereby she made a mistake, she admits, for the man buttonholed her for nearly an hour with a dissertation of the advantages of handling the kind of gasoline he was selling. Foster Near Starvation Without Pig’s Knuckle There’s no accounting for tastes, Preston Foster, leading screen player admits, and proves his point by citing this as his favorite dinner: Pigs’ knuckles, potatoes, boiled eggs, browned butter, vinegar, salt and pepper, all chopped together and served hot as hash. Foster moaned all during the making of “Heat Lightning,” on location in the Mojave Desert, beeause the cook attached to the Warner Bros. production troupe refused to make it for him. As the company producing “Heat Lightning,” now showing at the nt en ene Bat Theatre, was in the desert two weeks, Foster says he nearly starved. Actors In Desert Get Lobster-Red Sun-Burn Aline MacMahon, Ann Dvorak, Preston Foster, Lyle Talbot and other members of the movie company working in “Heat Lightning,” a Warner Bros. picture which comes to the DRG Ah ee ON tere eae 8 , got the worst sunburn of their lives during the production of the picture. Practically the entire picture was “shot” on location in the heart of the Mojave desert during a record heat wave when the thermometer registered as high as 125 degrees. After two weeks, they were as red as beets. A Siar and SAAR AR ARR A RNR 5 Special News Photo AUUULAUUOUUGUOOOU GUO UGHUEELAUHAUL Ruth Donnelly Sees Her First Auto Camp Ruth Donnelly, clever charaeter comedienne appearing in “Heat Lightning,’ a Warner Bros. picture which comes to the pcg Vea rear by ete ay nae Theatre on AO a ies Paka , had never seen the inside of a real auto camp until she and Glenda Farrell, her companion in the story, found themselves at the one built in the desert by the studio for the pieture. Ruth was so fascinated by the collection of cabins surrounding the desert filling station where the action of “Heat Lightning” takes place, that Director Mervyn LeRoy had all he could do to dissuade her from sleeping in the camp. She finally went with the company to a dude ranch nearby where the players were quartered. Villain Role Hardest, Asserts Lyle Talbot “Almost anybody can be a hero in a picture. But you have to keep your head to be a heel.” These are words of wisdom from Lyle Talbot, a young actor who is one of the villains in “Heat Lightning,’ a Warner Bros. picture now showing at eget rye Soi vy te Theatre. “A straight part is just that,” Talbot says. “Anybody ean be more or less natural in such a role. There is no danger that he will ‘slip’ back into villainy automatically if he doesn’t watch himself. But you have to keep your head to be a conscientious heel. If you don’t, you’ll revert almost unconsciously to type and training and do something that makes the character you are playing look regular—and consequently foolish.” Fears Character Name Would Insult Friend Glenda Farrell, playing the part of Mrs. Tifton, a wise-cracking Reno divorcee in “Heat Lightning,” a Warner Bros. pieture now showing at the ....... Theatré, wrote to-a_ personal friend of hers by that name, assuring her that she had nothing to do with picking the name. Her Double NPC AT Here is an exclusive photo showing pretty Ann Dvorak with the little girl who served as her stand-in during the filming of “Heat Lightning”, Warner Bros. hit now at the Strand. In the broiling sun, the winsome lass on the left stood and allowed cameras to be focused and distances to be marked off, so that the star, on the right, could go through her part without any trouble. A tough life —we'll say so! Mat No. &—20c. 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