My Love Came Back(Warner Bros.) (1940)

‘MY LOVE CAME BACK'—ADVANCE PUBLICITY Mat 205—30c IT'S A GAY NEW ROMANCE when girl Olivia deHavilland meets boy Jeffrey Lynn in the happiest new blues-chaser of the year, "My Love Came Back", the new film opening at the Strand on Friday. ‘My Love Came Back’ Shows New ‘Pick-Up’ Technique The technique of scraping acquaintance with a shy young man and inducing him to take you to a dance is something every up-and-coming, well-bred young girl should know. Let’s see how those smart people in Hollywood do these things—as observed on the set by a roving reporter. The scene is from “My Love Came Back” on the Warner lot, and Olivia deHavilland is all pinked up in frills, standing at the doorway of the New York Beaux Arts costume ball. She has been stood up by that old meanie Charles Winninger. Jeffrey Lynn, lean and interesting in a tailcoat, is dawdling about, ready to leave. Olivia tilts an ear to the orchestra as Jeffrey passes, and remarks casually to the cosmos at large: “They have a marvelous orchestra, don’t they?” Jeffrey smiles, but he’s on guard. “Sure do. stay?” Olivia overplays her hand. “T can hardly go in and dance Why don’t you by myself,” she tells him coyly. Jeffrey retreats into silence. But the gal is a persistent little number. “Oh — perhaps you don’t dance. Or do you?” “Yes, indeed.” (Great Scott, man, watch out!) “But very seldom.” (Ah, he got out of it.) “T see. Excuse me. Goodnight.” Here the girl stakes everything. She gives him the direct freeze. Well, he let himself in for it, the poor fish. She’s now made him feel like a flub and a boor. As she turns away from him, he follows. “Look — if you’re really so fond of dancing...” She gives him that surprised look. “Who — me?” (Get a load of that! “Who — me?” Does she think he means Mahatma Ghandi? But it works. Ah, how it works!). “Come on, — let’s dance just once, anyway.” The humbling of the shy but arrogant male is complete. The predatory sex has actually got him pleading. The man-child is captured! ‘My Love Came Back’ Presents Brand New Olivia deHavilland Those who see Olivia deHavilland in Warners’ “My Love Came Back,” which opens at the Strand next Friday, will recognize a completely new Olivia. Just as pretty, just as petite. The same soft voice, the same brown eyes. But more power in the one and more twinkle in the other. Olivia has grown up. She has poise now and authority in her delivery of lines. She doesn’t believe in beautiful princes that come a-gallop-a-gallop to the rescue of the distressed maiden. She has found that she has a mind and a stubborn streak and lately she has been exercising both. Those among her early Hollywood associates who used to smile indulgently when Olivia became provoked, which was oh, so seldom, now disappear discreetly when the young woman shows a temper. She has been known to throw things, just as she throws them in “My Love Came Back,” and she can stomp her heels and flash her eyes and wave her chin as well as the next pretty young actress in a tantrum. She no longer trusts everything everyone tells her. She argues at the drop of a comma out of her lines and she went without pay for many long weeks, some months ago, because she couldn’t agree with Warner Bros. as to what would be best for her. The soft-voiced Melanie who suffered for everybody in ‘‘Gone With The Wind,” the picturepretty “lady in a tower” in “Robin Hood” and half a dozen other roles opposite the striding Errol Flynn, was no more. In her place was a more elegant, a more assured, a more sophisticated person who demanded and was accorded all the rights of her position as a successful player and a box office favorite. “My Love Came Back,” shows the new Olivia in unmistakable pattern. She is no longer the simple, small town girl out of her depth in the Hollywood swim. She is the slightly imperious, decidedly confident, completely self possessed actress, determined to make a place for herself in the film colony even if she has to fight to do it. She has changed in other ways too. Around Hollywood, everyone’s saying she’s in love. Everyone else does, but she won’t say. But she looks it. His name is Jimmy Stewart. Jeffrey Lynn Plays Staid But Romantic Lover in New Gomedy One of the most charming films of the season, Warner Bros.’ “My Love Came Back,” which opens at the Strand next Friday, is a sparkling Hollywood product that puts Jeffrey Lynn in the front ranks of actors headed for top flight stardom. Playing opposite Olivia deHavilland, Lynn has an excellent opportunity to display the effervescent personality that first demanded attention in ‘Four Daughters.” The clean-cut, handsome fellow has gone far in his short time in films. “Yes, My Darling Daughter” — “It All Came True” — “All This, And Heaven Too” — and now “My Love Came Back” — all varied roles that have proven him to be an actor as well as “personality boy.” Lynn’s role in the new film is that of the efficient business manager of Charles Winninger. The old boy falls for Miss deHavilland and it is left to Lynn to straighten things out when complications set in. Olivia, unaware of the scandal she has caused, is dumbfounded when Jeffrey admonishes her, and the comely Melanie of “Gone With The Wind” does an about face and tosses off a mean temper tantrum. Jeffrey’s personality might be considered anything but that of a schoolteacher’s. Yet this is the work he took up after college, and he believes he would not be a professional actor today if he had not first become a schoolteacher. He had starred in dramatic society plays at Bates College, but when he graduated he took a fling at business. Two years of this, and he was convinced he had not been born to be a business man. Then he became a teacher of English in a Lisbon, Me., high school, also coaching the dramatic clubs. Even so faint a whiff of grease paint reawakened the desire to be an actor, and before the end of his year as a teacher he was off for New York to seek fame and fortune as a Thespian. New Kind of Blow-Up! When actors “blow up” and forget their lines, that’s considered routine in a movie studio, but when a concert pianist bogs down in the middle of the well-known wedding march, that’s cause for considerable ribbing. Max Rabinowitsh, composer, and formerly accompanist for Chaliapin, blew Mendelssohn’s famous nuptial music in a scene on the “My Love Came Back” set. But he could explain it. “Me, I had such a short wedding,” he said, “that they just played the first eight bars.” At Home In Hollywood Kurt Bernhardt, German director, was used to the more formal ways of Europe when he reported to Warner Brothers to make his first picture, “My Love Came Back,” with Olivia deHavilland, Jeffrey Lynn, Jane Wyman, Eddie Albert and Charles Winninger. He arched an eyebrow when a prop man called him by his first name, but now responds happily to the nickname of “Baron” which was hung on him by Miss Wyman. Slave To Music Jeffrey Lynn, who has appeared as a musician in so many pictures that he ought to join the union, is cast opposite Olivia deHavilland in “My Love Came Back’”’—in which every leading character plays a musical instrument except Lynn. [15] Everybody Has a Good Time In ‘My Love Came Back’ The Warner Bros. picture called “My Love Came Back” which opens at the Strand Friday, is a musical comedy as frothy as the swish of a Viennese petticoat in waltz time. Some entertaining young people are acting in it and having fun. Olivia deHavilland plays a violin, sweet or hot; Jane Wyman is at the piano; Eddie Albert performs prodigies on a tuba; Charles Winninger sashays with the deft feet of a soft-shoe dancer; Jeffrey Lynn unbends and solemnly makes cat calls on a mouth organ. The director is Kurt Bernhardt — young, European, ardent, making his first picture in America. They call him ‘The Baron.” Ann Gillis is playing her first grown-up role as a New York debutante. Bill Orr, lately with “Meet the People,” a_ lighthearted travesty in which he did imitations, is trying to look like a serious young man. They induce Olivia deHavilland to sit on a boom. A boom is a tall derrick designed for sweeping camera shots. They elevate Olivia to a terrifying thirty feet and leave her there. Eddie and Jane grab a piano. They are composing a_ song. SO WILL YOU! They solemnly assure the Baron that it ought to be in the picture. The name of it is “Sentimental Serenade.” It isn’t bad. “Jimmie Stewart on the telephone!” Olivia jumps. She easily. It’s a phony call. The Brodetzky String Ensemble, which specializes in Tschaikowski, swings into a stomp-down version of “Flat Foot Floogie.” Max Rabinowitsh, former concert pianist and accompanist for the great basso, Chaliapin, makes timpani on a keyboard. “Quiet, please! Quie-ut!” Art Leuker, assistant director, holds a_ record. He _ hollers “quiet” louder and oftener than any assistant director in Hollywood. That’s quite a record. The lilting music of Liszt’s “Second Hungarian Rhapsody” fills the great sound stage. It’s the playback record spinning swiftly. It spins from Liszt to swing time. Toes tap. Olivia and Jane take their places at first and second violin. “My Love Came Back” is a story about some girls and boys at a music school, a swing orchestra, a music factory, and New York in the Spring. People fall in love, too. teases Swingsters in Strand Comedy Put Classic Tunes in The Groove Purists who up their noses at such Hollywood goings-on as Benny Goodman and Leopold Stokowski performing a dual concert will have an opportunity to do some expert askance looking at a film called “My Love Came Back,” which opens Friday at the Strand. The picture is a naturalized version of a Viennese comedy and has to do with a music school in which a group of bright young students, led by a swing extrovert in the person of Eddie Albert, perform classic tunes in swing time. The classics which have been given, as they say, new pulsations, are Liszt’s “Second Hungarian Rhapsody,” Mendelssohn’s “On Wings of Song,” Chopin’s “Nocturne” and Schubert’s “Unfinished Symphony.” Olivia deHavilland and Jane Wyman, abetted by Mr. Albert’s vigorous conducting and a full orchestra, contrive to play them. Arrangers of these classics into modern tempo were Max Rabinowitsh, who was formerly Chaliapin’s accompanist and a concert pianist in his own right, SWEET, Wyman, Olivia deHavilland and Eddie Albert have a jam and jive session in "My Love Came Back", gayest, freshest film comedy of the year. and Ray Heindorf, who was recruited to the studio music staff hot from a swing band at the Cocoanut Grove. They are still good friends. “New pulsations” to Schubert, Mendelssohn, Liszt and Chopin have produced, according to Mr. Rabinowitsh, “sophisticated swing.” In orchestrating the arrangements, they have _ eliminated the brass entirely and have featured the strings and a harp. The latter is elegantly played by a young man with the technique of Harpo Marx. Other instruments are piano, woods, a guitar and drums. Food! Come and Get It! Olivia deHavilland, who ate five meals a day while working on “My Love Came Back” and lost one inch around the waist, enjoyed one Bavarian cafe scene with Charles Winninger more than any take in the picture. Food was served. Olivia had pretzels and hot tea—in a beer mug—and other delicacies. And the scene had many takes. HOT AND SWINGEY! — Jane Mat 202—30c