Out of the Fog (Warner Bros.) (1941)

ADVANCE PUBLICITY — 'OUT OF THE FOG' Wishing Makes It So Says Ida Lupino Still [L217 ; Mat 207—30c Star of ‘Out of the Fog’ Tells How She ‘Wished’ Herself From Ingenue to Stardom In Hollywood you can wish but it’s almost utterly futile to plan. So, I always tell the boys at the office — I mean on the set — I have a well-wished out future. Of course, you’ve heard that wishing will make it so, and I have a hunch that at long last wishes do come true out here. The first hundred years of waiting for them turn from a wish into an actuality are the hardest. It seemed at least a hundred years that I was wishing my way out of sickly-sweet ingenue parts. At first I fought hard, and planned a quick campaign to bring about what happened later, when I’d stopped fighting hard and given up planning. Suddenly, in “The Light that Failed,” they made me an actress. It was as simple as that. I thought I’d been doomed to vapid ingenues for life. That’s why you can’t plan things in Hollywood. They just happen. Human prevision can’t possibly forsee them. Now I want to have another change of character, before I become typed as the siren and the neurotic female of, let’s say, 4 “They Drive By Night.” Of the gun moll in “High Sierra,” the ex-convict in “The Sea Wolf.” I made a step toward it, thank Heavens, in my newest picture “Out of the Fog,’ as Thomas Mitchell’s daughter. She’s a sympathetic character, and although she falls for gangster John Garfield — briefly — she’s no gun moll, nor yet a jail bird. Frankly, I’d also like to face the challenge offered by a dominant feminine role. Hitherto my characterizations have never been first in dramatic importance, opportunity and, therefore, responsibility. That wish, by the way, is no shallow vanity, no desire to be “the whole thing.” It’s simply because I like the idea of taking big chances for big rewards. Would I like an Academy Award? Don’t be silly! It would thrill me to death. So, I’m following a wishing campaign for the role that will be the big gamble, win or lose. I’ve got it all wished out, but I know better than to plan anything. I can take a hint — and the years I’ve spent in Hollywood are stronger than hints. Still GP51; Mat 205—30c SMASH COMING! Thomas Mitchell finds himself in the fell clutch of John Garfield. Scene heralds the exciting action you'll find in “Out of the Fog," which comes into the Strand on Friday. Film Cast Does Brilliant Acting In ‘Out of the Fog’ John Garfield hasn’t got it in him, in real life, to bop with fists and rubber hose anybody who can’t bop back. Thomas Mitchell and John Qualen hate fishing. Ida Lupino hates the frills of orchid-champagne-caviar living. Aline MacMahon believes that if you think you’re well, you'll stay well, and she shuns hypochrondiacs like a plague. George Tobias wouldn’t admit he wasn’t rolling in wealth, even if he didn’t have a dime and owed a fortune. Eddie Albert hates high-pressure salesmen. So: In “Out of the Fog,” the new picture coming to the Strand Garfield is playing the _iceblooded racketeer Goff of the Irwin Shaw stage hit; he bops both Thomas Mitchell and John Qualen around a great deal. Mitchell and Qualen are the gentle old fellows who love their fishing. Miss Lupino leaves her true love for the sake of promised champagne-orchid-caviar living. Miss MacMahon is a complaining, self-martyred hypochondriac. Albert plays a boardwalk “pitch” man. And Tobias is the Sheepshead Bay merchant who’s always saying that he’s on the verge of bankruptcy. ‘Out of the Fog’ Sets Reflect Story's Mood Building a nice, new, bright little flat for Jonah Goodwin’s family in Warner Bros.’ screen version of “Out of the Fog” took a day and a half. “Out of the Fog” is the new picture opening at the Strand Friday. Turning that nice clean flat into an old dingy one, with the wall-paper leak-stained and peeling from the plaster, took four days, cost twice as much as building: it. That’s the way things go in the movies, upside down or backwards. However, there -is a very simple and understandable reason behind the cost of artificially aged sets, according to the man who created this one, Carl Jules Weyl. “The building trade, in or out of a studio, can produce a given new structure of more or less standard design with ordinary workmen in a rapid, efficient, almost mass-production manner,” Weyl says. “Aging, however, is a problem for artists. “An ordinary paper-hangar, could do three such dwellings as this while the highly-paid specialists who make the paper look dingy, water-stained and scaling do one. In depicting poorer dwellings, where people live of necessity and not through choice, Weyl points out, there is also a greater problem in doing what all set-designers strive to do, making the surroundings hint at the character of the person in them. The property department supplied a few touches, for example, to the room of the daughter of the family, played by Ida Lupino, in “Out of the Fog.” Chief of these were some little potted flowers just outside the window. In that drab setting, they were a striking note, Weyl declared, symbolic of the girl who was hungry for the beauty that her position in life kept from her. The Goodwin home, the art director pointed out, speaks loudly also of the slovenly nature of the complaining wife, played by Aline MacMahon. And in a corner, by a tattered easy chair and elsewhere are the masculine touches that speak of a gentle, tweedy, thoughtful and tebaccoloving soul, who also likes fishing. That, of course, is Jonah, played by Thomas Mitchell. “In a picture like this one, these things are done with great care, by artists who study the story characters as carefully as do the scenario writers, the directors, the casting officials. But they don’t get much recognition for it, as a general rule.” Dressing a set such as that of “Out of the Fog,” costs as much, and sometimes more than the very fancy ones. Securing the right sort of aged props is like aging a new set. It takes costly time, Weyl points out, and the expert thought and execution of high-salaried men. ‘Out of the Fog’ Brings Garfield Role He Wanted to Play on Stage Film Adaptation of Irwin Shaw Drama, ‘The Gentle People’ Coming to Strand Broadwayites, those in show business particularly, have the sentimental notion that if you stand at the corner of the Astor bar in Times Square long enough eventually you will meet your Uncle Herman. The one who went to Patagonia 19 years ago and since that time has not been heard from. John Garfield has some such idea about Hollywood wriggling around in his mind these days. A few months less than three years ago the Group Theatre people in New York, of which Garfield then was a most crusading member, sent him a copy of a new play by Irwin Shaw called “The Gentle People.” There was a part for him in the piece, and John was most eager to play it. This, that and the other thing happened around that time, however, and Warner Bros. kept Garfield at the cinematic capstans. Sylvia Sidney and Franchot Tone went into the girl and gangster roles in the New York play, Elia Kazan got the part that Garfield couldn’t accept. Recently Warner Bros. filmed the Irwin Shaw play under the title “Out of the Fog.” John Garfield has the role that Franchot Tone played on the stage. Ida Lupino has the Sylvia Sidney part and others in the quite impressive cast are Thomas Mitchell, Eddie Albert, George Tobias, John Qualen, Aline McMahon, Odette Myrtle and a father and son combination: Bernard and Leo Gorcey. The director is Anatole Litvak, whose last picture was the successful “City for Conquest.” On the stage the play was done in three acts, 11 scenes, five sets: a pier jutting out into Still GP2; Mat 107—15c JOHN GARFIELD in “Out of the Fog," coming to the Strand. Long Island sound, the living room of a home, a night court, the steam room of a Turkish bath, a fishing boat out in the bay. The screen play as written by Robert Rossen has 203 scenes and these were cut up by’ Litvak’s camera-handling into maybe five times as many “angles.” The story of “Out of the Fog” is a rather simple one, as motion picture plots generally go. Irwin Shaw, the author of the play, said of it on the fly leaf of the Random House edition: “This play is a fairy tale with a moral. In it justice triumphs and the meek prove victorious over arrogant and violent men. The author does not pretend that this is the case in real life.” It is not a fairy tale, of course. Two. meek old men, one Olaf a chef, the other Jonah a tailor, have one escape from the humdrum existance of a beach resort in the winter, to fish, at night, from the little boat they own together. Comes to this little community of simple people a ruthlessly chill young man who forces the oldsters to pay him $5 weekly “protection” for their boat. This racketeer makes other demands, involves himself with the daughter of the tailor, eventually beats the old fellow to make him give up his life savings. Eventually “the meek prove victorious,” as the playwright promised. But the story is not as simple as that, of course. The pattern of its plot is of more intricate design. But it is very real, and very human. In the hands of such a capable troupe, “Out of the Fog” emerges as one of the finer things of the season. For Garfield, it proves that by deserting the stage for Hollywood, he has not missed out on worth-while roles. Stage Cronies Reunited In Film Coming to Strand At the urgent request of Thomas Mitchell, the part given Bernard Gorcey in . Warner Bros.’ “Out of the Fog” was expanded so that the two old friends might appear in a sequence together. Hitherto, the arrangement of the scenes placed Gorcey in sequences in which only George Tobias appeared with him. Gorcey, father of Leo Gorcey of “Dead End Kids” fame, comes from the New York stage, and was a chess-and-checkers opponent of Mitchell’s in many a back-stage session. Leo is also featured in “Out of the Fog.”