Sonny Boy (Warner Bros.) (1929)

DAVEY LEE in “SONNY BOY” — Warner Bros. Latest Vitaphone Talking Picture _FEATURES FOR NEWSPAPERS FORE = my tithe language he understood, for he eRe Ee Pea SS \ Davey Lee, A Warner Bros, Star MILLION DOLLAR KID is an out-door-man. Stock S-313——Cut or Mat Order Separately . NEW YORK CRITICS RAVE ABOUT DAVEY “Sonny Boy” has taken possession of Broadway. This, as you probably have read in the dailies, is little Davey Lee’s first starring vehicle, and Davey, in turn, is the four-year-old who scored a sensational hit in “The Singing Fool,” with Al Jolson. When we say that the baby is as sweet and cute as your own kid, we feel that we have passed him the picture palm, for, as you know, there’s really only one wonderful _child=in the world and. everybody a has it. Peat Davey’s a love, and when he lisps his lines the “Ohs” and. “Ahs” of the audience are like unto the droning of bees on a June morning. When the child sings, the spectators’ laughter is loud and thoroughly good-natured. To be sure, Mr. Lee, the very tiniest luminary on Hollywood Boulevard, is okay! —New York American... The Main Stem discovered last night it has another mammy singer, perhaps the funniest who ever worried musically, about a relative fora fee. Davey Lee, four, hitting “Sonny Boy”-on all six in his first starring film at the Warner Theatre, is pleasure not. to be missed. The infant is a knockout. Like Jolson himself, he let the music slip ahead of him and caught up with it, he turned on a tremolo to wring your correspondent’s heart. He injected such superb despair into his vocal compassion for little ones,a beautiful young lady in F 3 had hysterics. The rest of the customers were laughing with delight. Davey Lee justified Al Jolson’s faith in him in other ways-popping out his lines with inflections you never have heard before. His IF YOU ARE ONE OF THE THOUSANDS WHO HAVE CRIED OVER “SONNY BOY” You Will Read Mayme Ober Peak’s Story Reprinted from the “Boston Sunday Globe” HOLLYWOOD, Dee. 29.—A sturdy little figure stood shyly poised in an office door of the great white-front, radio-towered Warner Brothers studio in Sunset Boulevard. His chubby arms held a bouquet of red berries almost as big as he was. Over the top of his Christmas offering peeped twinkly, mischievous eyes and an adorable little face as round S las the blue cap which set at a jaun ty angle on his brown bangs. Prompted by his mother, he came toward me with the appraising uncertainty of a child with strangers and poked the big bouquet at me. Instantly I was on my knees with arms out. Apparently this was ran straight into them and planted a wet kiss on my cheek. He Steals a Writer’s Heart When I tell you that, as quickly as this, my heart was completely stolen by the sensation of the motion picture season, 4-year-old David §i/Lee, you will understand why “Son| & iny Boy” is captivating even the most blase audiences wherever “The Singing Fool” is being shown. his parents any amount for privilege of adopting him. “He’s just the baby I have always wanted,” the childless comedian pleaded. “T’ll give him every advantage money can buy, send him to Harvard, do anything!” But Hollywood’s youngest player |; He loves his “Unele | : Al” dearly, and now that Unele Al | is not for sale. is out of town, David wonders and wonders why he stays away so long. But this child worships his muvver and daddy and Buddy, and without them he wouldn’t be Davey at all. For the season’s sensation is a mere baby who wouldn’t give one of his toys for his three-figure weekly salary, his wonderful five-year coutract and his heavy fan mail. A Healthy, Normal Lad A healthy, normal boy baby at that, who wriggles and twists and wants something doing every minute. If it hadn’t been for my vanity compact, which opens and shuts with considerable snap, our interview might not have progressed so satisfactorily! The youngster galloped all over the big tufted couch in the private office, where we had our talk, engineered by his nice young mother, Mrs. Frank D. Lee, who is as different from the average stage mother as Davey himself is different from the carefully coached and _ eurled younger gentry of Hollywood. She impressed me at once as being a woman of sound common sense with also a sense of values. One of the first things she told me was that she proposes keeping David unspoiled and unaffected, that she never has taken him out in public since he became famous except. once to visit Santa Claus in a Hollywood store. It is true that a elause in David’s contract prohibits “personal appearances,” but even if there were no clause, Mrs. Lee would see to it that the child is kept in sublime ignorance of his importance. As a result David has none of the stock mannerisms of the peculiar species, dragged around by their ambitious, greedy mothers, and dreaded by Hollywood casting direetors. David’s naturalness, his teasing banter, baby lisp and language all his own are absolutely irresistible. When he talks his little mouth twists just as it did in the picture where David speaks the first lines ever spoken by a child in the sound pictures. You remember the nursery scene where, lying in Jolson’s lap, he begs: poise rivals Menjou’s with a dash of |“Please, Daddy, theeng that Thonny Barrymore. —Bklyn Standard Union. Boy thong for me?” Well, that’s just And why | Al Jolson, despite his admission that | :|Davey almost stole the show, would iilike to have him for keeps, offering the | words. For yes he says “Less.” His io is “I think so or not!” His Lisp is Natural In repose the child has a certain quality of wistfulness about him chat sets him apart from the average youngster his age, and sereens so doignantly. But his mother says in veal life he is a regular fellow, as well as quite a handful, that he romps and plays and marches to the radio all day long. On the morning of our interview David was awfully dressed up and it was quite evident that he wasn’t used to it. He had on a diminutive pair of brown velvet breeches precisely the color of his brown bob, worn with bangs like Jackie Coogan used to wear. Big pearl buttons buttoned his pants to a pongee silk blouse which had a dainty frilling around the collar and euffs and up ithe front. The collar irked Davey’s fat little throat and he vociferously protested until Muvver loosened it. | Davey’s socks had bright striped ltops, his slippers were patent leather jand, mind you, he had a chinchilla FOLLOW THRU! : ae wae . ec | Davey Lee, A Warner Bros. Star SONNY BOY TRAVELS many miles in a day’s play with his pet dog. Stock S-314—Cut or Mat Order Separately collar on his dark blue broadcloth reefer, a band of the fur around his cap. But Mrs. Lee informed me that this latter elegance was the gift of “Uncle Al,” who insisted upon buying David a coat and eap like the kids were wearing in New York. They didn’t have exactly the kind of cap Jolson wanted, so he drew a pieture of it and had the cap made. Coasts Along the Couch Davey didn’t lose a minute shed the way Davey really pronounces his ding his outer garments and climb | got ing up on the couch for a rollercoaster ride down. To divert him, his mother untied the large packet of fan letters she had collected that morning at the studio and asked David to “read” one for me. Selecting one with a Boston postmark, which came from a little girl named Louise, living at 133 Endicott Street, Mrs. Lee said: “Read it to Miss Peak, Davey, like you read that fan letter to Daddy last night.” David took the letter, and with a wicked little twinkle at me, read: “Dear Davey Lee, I saw you in ‘The Thinging Fool.’ You were not so good, Goodby.” “Now, Davey, stop playing. isn’t what you said at all!” “What, Muvver, did I say?” “Didn’t you say I saw you in ‘The Singing Fool’ and I laughed so hard I kicked the show down?” “Less,” grinned Davey, becoming suddenly shy and retiring behind the couch... “All right, try again. one,:. Davey.” “Will you help me, Muvver?” “Goodness me, you can read it, a big boy like you. Now go ahead!” He Reads the Letter David hemmed and hawed. “I’ve nawful cold,’ he said. ‘Dear Davey Lee’—you help me Muvver. ? PALS Read this “Why, I know what’s-the matter, Davey. You’ve got the letter upside down. Of course you can’t read it. Try this now.” Davey repeated his same formula, declaring his fan said he was “no good ’tall,” all the time laughing gleefully at the realization that he| was teasing us. The second time I _ protested, “Now, David, you’re just trying to fool me. ll bet that little girl said you were wonderful in ‘The Singing Fool’ and she cried her eyes out.” “T think so or not,” said David, solemnly shaking his head. Whereupon I took the letter and read it to him. Sure enough the letter did say David Lee was marvelous and could the writer have his autographed picture right away? Another sent several snapshots she had taken of a picture of David in a theatre lobby which she wanted him to sign with his very own name, and several asked David to make another picture with Mr. Jolson. Quite a number of the letter writers inquired anxiously whether Da vid really died in the picture. Believe it or not, telegrams have poured in by the hundred from everywhere, asking Warner Brothers Studio if the rumor were true that little David Lee was dead. Mrs. Lee has even had messages of sympathy. For two weeks David, like Mark Twain, has been denying his demise! “T don’t know where the rumor started” Mrs. Lee said “maybe from the fact that Davey had the flu.” I don’t think so. I think it was lue to David’s art—a higher art ‘han you realize because:all the time he lay “dying” under the sheet in ‘hat hospital scene in “The Singing Fool,” David’s nosé was itching so vadly it was all he could do to keep from doing the logical thing. But Unele Al had told him not so much as to wiggle a toe while the camera was shooting, and David suffered and obeyed. “The minute the sheet was low| } ered,” laughed Mrs. Lee, “Davey called Unele Al to come and seratch ‘ his nose!” | By this time David, having lost interest in his fan mail, had discovered | my double compact which fascinated | him because it had “wed ink” on one side and “powver” on the other. Between opening and shutting it he powdered his neck and my chin. “Wite my name,” he said—and then it was “Wite Uncle Al’s name now.” Meanwhile, Mrs. Lee managed to tell me David’s story—the story of his amazing fling into fame, which began with the meeting with the jazz singer on the Warner lot. First, however, Mrs. Lee told me about her son Frank, David’s 16year-old brother, to whom,y’¥g owes his rood luck. Frank, you “will recall, gained recognition five years ago as the cripple child in “The Miracle Man.” Frankie a Boy to Them “Since that time,” said Mrs. Lee, casting direetors continue seeing Frankie as that child. They don’t seem to realize that he is ag tall as IT am and old enough to play juvenile parts. If he had been a little more mature Fox would have given him the role Nick Stuart had in “The River Pirate’ to play opposite Lois. Moran. Instead of being disappointed, Frankie came home thrilled, because the casting office told him: ‘Never mind, Frank, you have missed out on this, but when you are 18 “ just as big parts will come up.’ “Frankie hasn’t visited the studios much since he was 11, but has been studying hard at school.. So we were a little surprised when a-ecall eame one day from Central Casting for Frank to call at Warner’s for a test. We didn’t know what the part was, or anything about what picture they were casting for. “So I took an armful of Frankie’s. stills and we went to the studio. (Continued on Page 10) SOME DRIVE! DAVEY LEE’S MAIL brings thousands of letters from faraway fans. Stock S-315—Cut or Mat Order Separately