I am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang (Warner Bros.) (1932)

“Fugitive” Author Lives His Story in Hiding Have you ever met a fugitive author—a real fugitive with a price on his head? It’s an uncommon experience, but it’s a very thrilling kind of rendezvous. A long ride through the darkness on a rainy night, three knocks on the door of a house in a side-street in some suburban town, the rattling of a bolt, the opening of the door—and there was Robert KE. Burns, author of ‘‘I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang!”’ Sounds like a scene in a movie doesn’t it? But it really happened. Burns is in hiding, in constant dread of extradition by the State from whose chain gangs he twice escaped and then wrote the book from which Warner Bros. have made the new picture starring Paul Muni. Burns himself, the man whose tragic life-story forms the warp and woof of the plot of ‘‘I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang,’’ has not yet seen the picture. He is still a fugitive; he cannot show himself in public. Hence the long ride through the darkness for a rendezvous with the elusive author. A smallish man with ~lasses is Robert E. Burns, whom a sovereign State seeks to return to the chain gang as a eriminal who has not yet served out his term of years for the theft of a few dollars. He is a native of Brooklyn, and he talks the Brooklyn lingo. But he is a man of wide reading, a self-eduecated man, much of whose education in the ways of life was received when he was in the front line ‘‘over there’’; and he wrote his book himself, he says, in five days, within two weeks after his last escape from the chain gang in 1930. He is nervous and excitable, and no wonder. Over his head hangs constantly the sword of the law, whose abuses he has revealed. The other night, stealing into New York under cover of darkness, he visited the Plymouth Theatre and met for the first time Paul Muni, who has re-enacted Burns’ own history in ‘‘] Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang.’’ Previously Burns was out on the West Coast when the picture was in preparation at the Warner Bros. studios, but he did not meet Muni. He had to leave in a hurry before the actor arrived. Burns said: “They had it in the papers in AIbuquerque before I’d even reached Hollywood that I was going there. There it was in the headline, ‘Fugitive On Way to Movie Capital.’ Well, there I was for a few days, and then I got the tip that it wouldn’t be healthy for me much longer. So I ‘took it on the lam’ and come back East.” Burns hopes that ‘‘T Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang’’ will be to arouse the public to the abuses of the chain gang system, but will also help him in his fight for freedom. “It ain’t any fun to live in hiding,” he said. He talked: of war days, when he served with the Fourteenth Engineers as early as July, 1917, in France, brigaded with the British forces. He talked of his experiences on coming home to Brooklyn, when he found his pre-war job gone. Then came days of tramping, of hunger and desperation, and the tragic affair into which he was inyeigled and which resulted in his chain gang sentence. His escape from the chain gang; seven years of honorable citizenship in Chicago; marriage through blackmail, and then betrayal by his wife, a second servitude and a second escape, and now the years of hiding—of all these things Robert E. Burns talked. He said: “Tt hope Ill see the picture when it comes out. I guess sometime I'll go into some neighborhood theatre and give it the once-over. But I can’t afford to take chances.” There was a knock on the door from the outside. Time was up. ‘‘I got to get out of here,’’ said Burns, and away he went. The interview was over. Then back through the darkness and the rain to New York, where *‘T Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang’’ is blazoned in electric lights on Broadway e’re long—the real story a great picture and will help not only of a man who is still a. fugitive. Special Publicity Art Paul Muni as “The Fugitive” and Glenda Farrell, in “I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang,” the Strand Theatre’s new dramatic hit. Warner Bros. and directed by Mervyn LeRoy, is based on the autobiographical novel by Robert E. Burns who twice escaped from a Southern Chain Gang. Cut No.17 Cut40c Mati15e The film, produced by Glossary of Slang Used by Chain Gang Prisoners Out in Hollywood where writers, directors and players are supposed to be up-to-the-minute in all kinds of slang, whether it be college, gangster, cowboy or thieves’ jargon, they came upou an entirely new set of colloquial expressions while filming ‘‘I’m a Fugitive from a Chain Gang,’’ the Warner-Bros.’ picture, star ring Paul Muni, which is now at the The sereen play by Sheriden Gibney and Brown Holmes, is a thrilling dramatization of the book of Robert KE. Burns, who was sentenced to a chain gang for ten years for the theft of less than five dollars, who escaped twice and who is still a fugitive. Here are the most common terms used: Upright chain: A chain three feet long attached to the center of the 13 link chain called the ‘‘strad,’’ chain, used for manacling the ankles Building chain: A long chain passed through the ring of the ‘‘upright’’ chain at night, allowing exactly three feet of movement to each sleeping prisoner. Getting up: The prisoner’s yell at night when for any reason he wants to get out of bed. Leg belts: Contraptions similar to the ordinary man’s garters used to keep the strad chains on the prisoners’ ankles from dragging. Shackle poison: The extremely sore infections that often arise from ee gp ee Theatre. the continually rubbing shackles. Sproul: Small rock of the roadway which the prisoners shovel for fifteen and a half hours each working day. Wiping it off: A call to the guard, signifying that the prisoner wishes to stop work for a moment to wipe the sweat from his face. If he does so without the guard’s permission, he is whipped. Lay ’em down: quit work and eat. Getting the leather: Being whipped. The command to Work out: To serve your complete sentence. Pay out: To buy a parole or pardon. Die out: Death during serving of sentence. Run out: To escape. Pie Wagon: Steel-barred wagon on wheels, with four tiers of three bunks each, which serve as sleeping quarters. I want to smell you: The guard’s —$—<———————— ee eall for a prisoner to approach and be smelled. This is the method of determining if a man has done enough work to work up a sweat. Getting out here: Request to be excused to get a drink, or for any other reason leave the work. Hang it on a limb: Term for escape. Polite joint: Places prisoners know where they can hide and be protected if they escape. Junker: A prisoner serving a term for selling dope. Heist guy: A stick-up man. Jack: The torture instrument to which prisoners are sometimes subjected. It resembles the old stocks and completely paralyzes a prisoner within an hour. Pickshack: Instrument of torture. It is a bar of steel thirty inches long and weighing ten pounds. It is fastened to the prisoners legs, locked, and worn in addition to the shackles for a period of sixty to ninety days. La Grange necklace: A thick iron collar and five feet of heavy chain, which disobedient prisoners are given to wear at night. Besides Paul Muni, the famous stage and screen star, the actors include such well known players as Glenda Farrell, Helen Vinson, Preston Foster, David Landau, Sally Blane, Noel Francis, Berton Churchill, Sheila Terry and Allen Jenkins. The picture was directed by Mervyn LeRoy. — — ——-me_to. come: He-b4s—parucu-mutn === === EEE nnn, Movie Stars Don’t Last, So Paul Muni Refuses Star Rank By CARLISLE JONES Hollywood, Calif.—Paul Muni has weighed the star system in pictures and says he has found it wanting— so far as he personally is concerned. He will have nothing to do with it. His unique new contract with Warner Bros. provides specifically that he is not to be officially ‘‘starred’’ in ‘‘I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang,’’ which opens next ...........0.cce at the Nese ree Theatre with Glenda Farrell playing the feminine lead. He is to make other pictures for the same company over a long period of time, but he is not to make more than two a year. NN NS CNC GN Paul Muni, as “The Fugitive” in the Warner Bros. dramatic success “IT Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang” which opens at the Strand on Friday. Cut No. 4 Cul15c Mat 5e >> = —_ The success of ‘‘Searface’’ and of Muni in the title role in that production might easily have. skyrocketed the young actor into st: nd <.20 fixed him in gangster lon: down on both ideas. His first few hours on the Warner Bros. lot were devoted to making this plain to interviewers and to expressing enthusiasm for his new role in ‘‘I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang.’’ His wife was present, when Muni made his forceful public stand against stardom and against multiple appearances for actors playing leading roles in pictures. ‘‘Stardom is a kind of slavery to the public. Instead of finding the actor for a part the producer has to find parts for his star. It’s bad business, and soon becomes a vicious circle. Some actors are brilliant enough to survive a long period of this, but I couldn’t. I know I eouldn’t. So I won’t.’’ Rather smaller than he appears to be on the screen, Muni nevertheless gives off an impression of power. He has a fine head with a pugnacious nose and a stubborn upper lip somewhat contradicted by kindly brown eyes and small, expressive hands which he kneads into one another while he talks. He speaks rapidly, forcefully and with a precise selection of words. One is immediately impressed with his sincerity, his earnestness of purpose and his total lack of pose. Late in the interview hours he referred again to his stand against stardom. ‘‘T am primarily an actor,’’ Muni declares, ‘‘a stage actor. I’ve been doing that for twenty-four years —— since I was eleven years old. My father was an actor. My mother is an actress. I have no desire to be anything else. *‘T want to be comfortable. I want to be very comfortable indeed. I want enough to make my family and the dependents I have secure for the future. But my idea of comfort and security doesn’t match up with Hollywood’s ideas of stars’ salaries. I don’t need that much to be either comfortable or happy.’’ Muni’s rule against more than two productions a year is a self-made one for his own use only. He admits that others can turn out more good performances than that in the given time, but he doesn’t think the kind of role he wants will come along oftener than that. Besides, he has no intention of adopting Hollywood permanently, thereby sacrificing his stage career. Page Seventeen