Love Honor and Behave (Warner Bros.) (1938)

ONEIL GIRL WAITED FOR MOVIE STARDOM “Success means nothing until tomorrow. “Glamour is the result of an infinite capacity for taking pains— yesterday. “Be sure you know enough to stay on top before you try to get there.” Introducing Barbara O’Neil, glamour girl model 1938, who had sufficient brains to wait until she was ready for success. She spent six years of hard work as a preparation for taking Hollywood in her stride and is now doing it. The above is her philosophy. She is now playing a featured role in “Love, Honor and Behave” at the Strand Theatre. This girl played in the Falmouth Players in New England with Henry Fonda and Margaret Sullavan, and turned down offers to come to Hollywood while those two went on to the screen and stage stardom. Then, she thought, she needed more experience. Today, at 27, she is ready and has already proved her capabilities in “Stella Dallas.” She is a delight to the eye, to the casting office and to her director, for she has developed a romantic personality that is definitely her own. She can and has played almost every type of role, and she has the experience of the tested trouper with which to do it. Barbara O’Neil is very definitely equipped with brains. She has come to Hollywood success the hard way, summer stock and winter stock companies, small roles on Broadway, taking every role offered if it promised the opportunity to work under a new or unusually capable director. HE KNEW HER WHEN— Mona Barrie, currently featured in “Love, Honor and Behave,” at the Strand, had the unique experience of unconsciously masquerading as a famous star when she was en route to Hollywood to report for her first screen role. All along the route newspapermen and fans greeted her, which puzzled her no end, for she knew her name and the fact she was entering pictures meant nothing to the American public. Finally she could control her curiosity no longer. At Omaha she asked a reporter whom he thought she was. He replied that he knew she was Bebe Daniels! IT WAS FOOLPROOF An electric dishwashing machine got a laugh out of the film folk on the “Love, Honor and Behave” set recently at Warner Bros. studio. According to the script, the washer was supposed to function perfectly for a while and then blow up, showering Priscilla Lane and Dick Foran with soapsuds, water and crockery. Everything went right with the first part of the scene but the machinery stubbornly refused to explode. After several attempts, Wayne Morris wandered onto the set and offered to see what he could do. After monkeying with the gadgets a while, he finally lay flat on the floor and stared up at the works. There was a painted sign on the underside. It said “foolproof.” Proving conclusively that even in Hollywood, you can believe in signs. LUCKY ACCIDENT WINS FILM CAREER FOR BOY If a secretary hadn’t been late for work, one of the screen’s most beloved child actors might not have been discovered. Dickie Moore is the youngster who thus throws confusion into the ranks of those who insist on extreme punctuality. Dickie was 11 months old and taking a sun bath on the porch of his home when it happened, Next door lived the secretary to Joseph Schenck and being Mr. Schenck’s secretary and late to work one of her employer’s assistants arrived to drive her to the studio. The rosy cheeked Dickie, quite possibly amused by this consideration accorded a _ tardy person, called out greetings and made quite a hit with the waiting assistant. He told of the baby at the studio and Mrs. Moore was invited to bring Dickie in for an interview. He was signed to a contract. A part with John Barrymore in “The Beloved Rogue” followed and Dickie was definitely headed for cinematic fame. More bits and small parts than he could handle were offered. He became so popular in fact, that roles were written in for him. He has been playing on the screen ever since, and now at the ripe old age of twelve is portraying Wayne Morris as a child in “Love, Honor and Behave” at the Strand Theatre. MUSIC FROM GEARS Certain nervous persons are suggesting that Dick Foran, the film actor, open a school for the purpose of teaching feminine motorists how to shift gears musically. The idea was born on the “Love, Honor and Behave” set at Warner Bros. when Dick, during a between scenes wait, demonstrated the numerous sounds he could produce by clashing the gears of a car. He played “Yankee Doodle,” he imitated birds and beasts and he even had the gears saying ‘‘mama.” (Sports Story) MOVIE TENNIS GAME STARTS ARGUMENT IN SPORTS CIRCLES Page Big Bill Tilden, Ellsworth Vines, Fred Perry! The argument that started ’way back in the days when they thought tennis was a sissy game is about to start over again. And it’s all because of the way they filmed a tennis game in a movie. A tennis game which brings out a point of sportsmanship around which the whole flicker plot revolves. Wouldn’t Big Bill have leaped on his soap-box to argue about the following situation—in fact, won’t he, when he sees the picture? It’s two-all in sets, 5-4 in the final set. But the boy who is trailing seems to have had the match in hand and his opponent is tired. Moreover, our hero is serving, and hitherto his service—in this set— has held beautifully. He wallops over the first service, and his tiring opponent can’t even touch the ball. On the next shot, the opponent hits out desperately. It’s one of those lucky returns that kiss the sideline; our player doesn’t even try for it. His next service makes the other player out a shot and it stands thirty-all. Then comes one of those heart-breakers all players know. Our hero tries for an ace, and his opponent’s feeble return balances on the net cord—then trickles over! Now it’s point set, match, tournament—but the boy is steady and confident. The first service stings into the court and the opponent forehands it desperately. It’s down the alley line so our hero lunges to make the return. “Out!” calls the linesman. And so is our hero’s return—the shot, out or in, was too much for him. “The score is deuce!” says the referee. Right there is where the film brings up that old tennis argument. For in the Warner Bros. comedydrama “Love, Honor and Behave,” which comes to the Strand Theatre next Friday, Hero Wayne Morris cries that the ball was good. He insists it’s game, set, match! Referee and opponent won’t accept that but agree to call a let and play the point over. Our hero dinks in a service, and the opponent dinks it back, unwilling to out such a shot or yet to kill it for the match. Then hero Morris — yeah, the “Kid Galahad” boy—obviously and deliberately throws the point! Had Big Bill Tilden, a keen competitor always, been there as a spectator, he’d probably have brained that super-gallant hero with the edge of a racket. Yet according to Fred Perry, in allEnglish matches, fine points like that are practically the rule of sportsmanship. Fred has won laurels for his sportsmanship as well as his play, but he and his countrymen, it seems, deliberately restrain their finer instincts in international and foreign play to conform with the more practical customs of the French and some other nations — possibly Americans, whose heritage is bitter argument with baseball umpires about adverse baseball decisions. Probably the tennis match in “Love, Honor and Behave” is given more importance than any ever filmed, for that lost match loses hero Wayne Morris his girl Priscilla Lane—for the time being—and throws monkey wrenches into the life-machinery of two very amusing families. HAS SIZEABLE MITTS Wayne Morris, star of “Love, Honor and Behave” has the largest hands of all the men who work at Warner Bros. studio. Morris spread the width of his palm against a burly boss carpenter and outdid him completely. Exploitation and Contest Ideas on Following Pages Page Fifteen