Missing Witnesses (Warner Bros.) (1937)

PUBLICITY —‘*MISSING WITNESSES’’ (Advance) Writers Must Be Cruel To Actors To be a successful story writer, scenarist or playwright, you’ve got to enact the villain’s part toward your characters. That’s the tip tendered us by a famous movie writing team and a noted director. Seeking to put ‘‘what’s wrong with the average beginning writer, scenarist or playwright?’’ into a formula, Don Ryan and Kenneth Gamet, writers, and William Clemens, director, decided that his worst fault is he’s a ‘‘softie.’’ He doesn’t deal ruthlessly enough with his characters. The pickles he gets them into aren’t tough enough, or if they are, he hints of the rescue, or even starts it, too soon. Their advice is to get the heroes and heroines into trouble quick, let the trouble get worse and worse, and don’t get so sorry for them that you tip off the audience to your plan for a speedy rescue. The authors, famous newspaper men before the movies drafted them, and Clemens, a successful playwright as well as movie director, authored and directed the new Warner Bros. melodrama, ‘‘ Missing Witnesses,’’ which will open next week at the Strand Theatre. ‘¢When we get our heroes and heroines into trouble, we really get them into trouble,’’ explains Ryan, who formerly conducted the famous newspaper column ‘‘ Night Court,’’ and was for years a police reporter. ‘‘Our heroine in ‘Missing Witnesses’? is a good example. Played by pretty blonde Jean Dale — a girl that only very villainous authors could treat roughly! — this heroine is accused of murder. Then trouble piles on trouble for her boy-friend, a detective played by Dick Purcell. ‘‘The least bit of decency and human kindness on the part of the authors would have moved them-— us—to have introduced our solution to their difficulties right then and there. But being seasoned villains who know how to write for money, we didn’t relent. It’s well toward the end of the story before an, way out becomes apparent, and then it is — we hope — not the one a spectator would expect.’? Director Clemens declares that even a director, given a ‘seript’ marked ‘‘Final’’ and ready to ‘‘shoot,’’? is lable to soften toward one of these danger-threatened, maltreated heroes or — particularly — heroines. But he steels himself against it. ‘‘Tike an author, a director becomes fond of characters, and finds himself considering them as friends whom he doesn’t wish to hurt,’’ Clemens remarks. ‘‘He must remind himself, however, that it’s life he’s mirroring and life is relentless and impersonal in its shuffling of an individual’s fate. ‘‘Tf the part of real life mirrored is too smooth and easy for the principal characters of your story, it’s not a part dramatic enough for the screen, the stage or even most fiction. But you can dramatize it if you concoct enough trouble for your favorites — real trouble— and keep them in it, up to their necks, until you’re ready for the swift wind-up of the plot.’’ John Litel plays the top role in ““Missing Witnesses.’’ a story of racketeering up to date. DIGK PURCELL CAME LONG WAY 10 HOLLYWOOD Dick Purcell is another of those husky and forthright actors who, like Clark Gable, was told he “wasn’t the type” when he tried in vain to “crash” pictures a few years ago. He went back to the stage, from which he had come, and scored some more notable successes. Even before he had tried to storm Hollywood the first time he had clicked in a big way on Broadway in such pieces as “Sailor Beware,” “Men in White,” and so on; but the studios would have none of him. A month after he had been starved out of filmtown, had borrowed money enough to return to New York, and had been promptly engaged for a play lead by Arthur Hopkins, the movies sought him. He made impolite noises and thumbed his nose, but at last succumbed when a con tract was thrust in front of hin, iron-clad and with several optionless years to run. Now he’s on contract at Warner Bros., with a fine succession of leading roles and “heavies” behind him, the latest being one of the top parts in “Missing Witnesses,’ in which he shares honors with John Litel and Jean Dale. This picture, which was directed by William Clemens, is now showing at the Strand. Page Sia JOHN LITEL LONG-WINDED John Litel, of the stage’s ‘‘ Ceiling Zero’’ fame, holds all current at his studio, Warner Bros., for before-the-camera speechmaking. In ‘‘Give Me Liberty’’ he made ’em as Patrick Henry. He lost the record in ‘‘Slim,’’ but regained it as the lawyer hero of ‘Midnight Justice.’’ Now he’s feeding it to the point where his chief long-speech rival of the studio, Pat O’Brien, will have trouble catching up. His newest orations are in ‘‘ Missing Witnesses,’’ in which he plays a police investigator, and which will be the feature attraction next week at the Strand Theatre. records Mat 201—30c SHE’S A MISSING WITNESS — Jean Dale, screen newcomer, and Dick Purcell have the leading romantic roles in the thrilling melodrama of crime-exposing, ‘‘ Missing Witnesses,’’ coming soon to the Strand. (Advance) Film Star's Life Is Healthy One According to one movie actor, at least, Hollywood is the healthiest, wholesomest and sanest area of its size in America. The actor is Warner Bros.’ husky and tal ented star, Dick Purcell, who studied sociology in college despite prowess as a hockey player on the varsity team. “Most of the insanities of Hollywood as cited and caricatured by the seallion-throwers aren’t insanities at all but merely human behavior that is a bit beyond the usual pattern laid down by the Main Streeters and Babbits that Sinclair Lewis so effectively tears apart,’ Purcell declares. “The so-called ‘rugged individualists’ are a flock of timid, imitative sheep alongside some of Hollywood’s individualists, rugged or otherwise. I admit some of them — the Hollywood rebels — are pretty amusing from almost anyone’s point of view, but it takes all sorts of people to make a world, and I think most of the sorts required are represented right here. “When I say Hollywood is one of the world’s healthiest spots I mean that literally, but don’t refer particularly to the climate. The healthy part about the town is the general interest in the out of-doors, in physical culture and bodily well-being. It’s particularly true of the women — I think research would probably reveal that our sun-tanned girls who go in for athletics and good health represent an unusually large proportion of the feminine population. “The same goes for wholesomeness. There’s little false modesty in Hollywood, and little dark, ignorant prudery and prejudice. Those are things which don’t flourish so well here in the sunshine — they’re fungus-like growths which do better in less sunny, breezy, clean-sired elimates.” Purcell is six-feet-one, 195 pounds and all brawny athlete. To see him in most of his film roles — playing colorful, adventurous types of character heroes for the most part, you’d never suspect this rugged shell concealed a modern, common-sense intellectual. His latest picture is “Missing Witnesses,” in which he plays a bull-headed strong-arm detective. It opens next week at the Strand Theatre. Opposite him is Jean Dale, and spotted in the other most important character of the film is John Litel. The story concerns Purcell’s reformation from a slugging cop into a real detective. Mat 104—15¢e JOHN LITEL — heads the cast of ‘‘Missing Witnesses,’’ coming to the Strand Theatre next Friday. SKATING RINK IN HIS HOME Dick Pureell, Warner Bros. hnsky fillum hero, is going to build a San Fernando Valley home which introduces a feature brand-new in movie star haciendas. Pureell’s home will contain, in addition to the usual items such as ping-pong and bowling rooms and outside swimming pools and tennis courts, a small indoor iceskating rink. The actor is a former hockey star and wants the rink to help him keep in skating form winter and summer. In addition it will be a novelty entertainment for guests. Construction of the home was held up while Purcell finished ‘“Missing Witnesses,’’ his latest picture, now showing at the Strand. William Clemens directed the picture from a screen’ play by Don Ryan and Kenneth Gamet. Mat 103—15¢ JEAN DALE has the leading feminine role in. ‘‘ Missing Witnesses’’ coming to the Strand Friday. (Lead Story) RACKET EXPOSE THEME OF FILM COMING FRIDAY How a big city was cleared of its racketeers by honest investigators and honest prosecutors is the theme of “Missing Witnesses,” a Warner Bros. melodrama featuring John Litel, Dick Pureell and Jean Dale, which is scheduled to open next Friday at the Strand Theatre. Written by a couple of police reporters who know their underworld — Don Ryan and Kenneth Gamet — the picture is said to be an authentic exposition of the terrifying process of getting witnesses out of the way who might testify damagingly against desperate crooks. Litel, who has played many lawyer parts on both stage and screen, is the honest prosecutor in this case. Purcell is an honest detective, and Miss Dale — a lovely newcomer to the films — is the girl who loves him and risks her life to aid in his efforts to clean up their city. “Missing Witnesses” has many thrilling episodes surrounding a murder mystery. It has plenty of romance, and considerable comedy. Others in the east include William Haade, Raymond Hatton, Ben Welden, Harland Tucker and Sheila Bromley. The picture was directed by William Clemens. MAP QUTLINES STAGE CAREER OF JOHN LiTeL One of John Litel’s prized possessions is a map of North America on which he has a complicated tracery of ink lines and circles. There are 92 circles and lines connecting every one of them. Traced back from the last cirele, around Hollywood where Litel is on contract as a featured player with Warner Bros., the lines weave across the United States, Canada and Mexico to take in nearly every city of any size — and wind up at a coal mining village in Pennsylvania. In the latter he started his career as a stage actor, at 26 — having become a coal miner rather than enter his father’s banking firm, on being graduated from the University of Pennsylvania. The other circles are cities in which he has played in theatrical stock, or with road companies travelling with important plays out of New York. The lines go from Bangor, Me., and Halifax, N. 8., to San Diego and Mexico City; from Seattle, Washington, and Calgary, Canada, to Miami, Fla. And, says Litel, “all but one, a trip of five hundred miles back to New York, were paid for by theatrical companies — which means I was only stranded once.” Litel has just finished playing the leading male role in “Missing Witnesses,” with Dick Purcell and Jean Dale. One of his biggest stage hits was “Ceiling Zero,” and on the screen his performances in “Marked Woman,” “Slim,” “Midnight Court” and the Technicolor Short, “Give Me Liberty,” are outstanding.