Sons o Guns (Warner Bros.) (1936)

PUBLICITY FEATURE STORY BY JOHN O’HARA Feature story on this page was written by John O’Hara when he was a member of the Warner publicity department. Since then he has become one of the leading novelists of the day, having won universal acclaim with his two novels, ‘Butterfield 8’ and ‘Appointment in Samarra,’ and also with many stories in the New Yorker magazine. Yarn is handled so that it ties right in with Joe E. Brown’s new film. When presenting story to your editor, be sure to stress the fact that it was written by O’Hara, which should help immeasurably in planting it. Ad. and short on bottom of last column of this page can be used by paper in advance of publication day. Joe I. Brown Had Tough Training Success Came Only After Years of Gruelling Work Popular Comedian Suffered Heartbreaks, Abuse and Broken Legs Before His Name Went Up in Lights By JOHN O’HARA (John O’Hara, noted author of the best selling novels ‘‘ Appointment in Samarra’’ and ‘‘ Butterfield 8,’’ wrote the following sketch of Joe E. Brown, star of ‘‘Sons O’ Guns,’’ the Warner Bros. musical comedy open 40: Othe = ee. Theatre on See » when he was a member of the publicity staff of Warner Bros. Pictures, a few years ago.) If you want the real story of Joe E. Brown, you must go back to a poorly lighted vaudeville house in the Southland. You must go back to the year 1909. It was a Sunday afternoon, the streets were baked by the lazy sun as four bedraggled men got off the cindery train, gaped about and asked the station-master for directions to the local opera house. Four men? Make it three men, for despite his long trousers and _ battered derby, closer scrutiny revealed that the figure which walked a few paces behind the others was that of a boy, not more than fifteen years old. Nor was he a cheerful kid. You could tell that something was wrong. He was an unhappy lad. The quartet found the theatre, changed to scant, athletic costumes. Three of the men had bulging, chunky, powerful legs. The lad was well-built but of a slender type. One of the men, a fellow with a bullet head and, seemingly, no neck, obviously was the chief of the party. He had a humorless look about him; cold, grey eyes and an officiousness that was apparent even in the few short steps he took to the middle of the stage. The other men stood near the wings while their leader addressed the lad. ‘‘Now look here, you’’ he said. ‘‘That trick flop that you do off my shoulders. If you don’t. get that right the next time we go on, you’re going to be good and sorry, get me? I’ve had enough of your crabbing this act. You do that fall right or — well, you do it right.’’ The lad eringed and said nothing. It could be seen that he was near tears. He merely nodded assent. Then the quartet went on with the rehearsal. The boy did the fall properly. There was no complaint. It was the next day at the matinee, but at the first evening performance that night, the boy was palpably nervous. It came time to be snapped up on the strong man’s shoulders. His hands were damp and nearly slipped away from the Goliath’s grip, despite its power. The strong man uttered under his breath: ‘‘You do that right or you’ll be sorry.’’ The boy’s ner vousness increased as he was twirled around in the air. The man was in a rage. Compound Leg Fracture Suddenly the boy was flung in the air by those powerful arms. And when he came down on the floor, there was a sickening bump and a sharp little crack. The boy lay there. He had a compound fracture of the leg... The boy was, of course, Joe E. Brown and he made the story seem very close, very recently, as he told it to me in his dressing room at the First National Studio. He paused in his narrative and looked around the room. ‘‘It seems pretty far in the past now,’’ he said. ‘*Not to me,’’ I said. ‘*T know, not to you,’’ he said. ‘“But that’s because you’re hearing it for the first time. I look around here and think how my life has changed since then. How I used to be beaten by that man! He was even more cruel than the first acrobat I worked with. ‘*You know I had very definite acrobatic ambitions when I was a kid. Ran away with a circus and all that. And that was a tough apprenticeship I served. The owner of the act paid me less money in a month that I spend for gasoline in a week — and I don’t drive many miles. I thought. I was making a wise move when I left him for the other act, but that was the way my leg was broken.’’ ‘“What happened to you when your leg was broken?’’ I asked. Tried Baseball Next ‘“T stayed at a boarding house, and the troupe paid my doctor’s bill, because the fellow who threw me was afraid I’d have him arrested. Then I went to St. Paul It’s Brown Seeing Red Joe E. Brown has had almost every possible stage experience, but he had a new one im making ‘‘Sons O’ Guns,’’ the Warner Bros. filmusical NOM OU UNO =, 5. .500tic sates Theatre. He became, for the first time in his career an Apache dancer. Above is the artist’s impressions of Joe E. as a Parisian gamin. On the left he is shown with Frank Mitchell, the noted acrobat, his dance partner. On the right is Joe as the artist depicts him im a vengeful mood. Mat No. 213—20e and played professional baseball, and I had a brief turn with the New York Yankees. Finally I gave up the strenuous type of entertainment and chose to be a comedian. A burlesque comedian, at that. ‘And maybe I didn’t work at that! Sleeper jumps, draughty dressing rooms, hurried meals — all the usual inconveniences of trouping. And remember, too, that I wasn’t the most confident fellow in the world. I was on my first time out as a comedian, and while I was pretty well convinced that Mother Nature had endowed me with the physical qualifications for a comedian, I was less certain that my lines would get the desired results, namely, hilarity on the part of the audience. ‘*Be that as it may, I stuck at it, and I must have been all right because they won’t let you stick in burlesque if you can’t make the customers laugh. I got a couple of Broadway offers and I grabbed one so quickly that you’d have thought I was being offered $10,000 a week. But never fear, I wasn’t. Not by fifty or sixty cents. ‘Once on Broadway, however, and I never was without work for any lengthy period. As a matter of fact I worked too hard. I’d become accustomed to a_ steady grind, but I had worked so hard for such a long time that I used to regulate my jobs so I could have a breathing spell now and then. As it was I had long runs in ‘Listen Lester,? ‘Jim Jam Jems,’ ‘‘Greenwich Village Fol lies,’ ‘Betty Lee,’ ‘Captain Jinks,’ and ‘Twinkle Twinkle.’ And didn’t I get a kick out of seeing my name up in lights for the first time! His First Movie Offer ‘*Tt was while I was playing in ‘Twinkle Twinkle’ in Los Angeles that I got my first movie offer. And I took it just as quickly as I did my first Broadway opportunity. And I’m glad I did. I have a swell time in the movies. There was ‘‘Sally,’? with Marilyn Miller. There’s still enough novelty in it to make it new and exciting, although I’ve had several years experience before the camera. Slightly more than two years, as a matter of fact. Here Joseph Evan Brown paused reflectively. I could not tell whether he was thinking of his early youth in Holgate, Ohio, of his father, the German contractor, or his Welsh mother; of his six brothers and sisters. I did know he was thinking of things that were deep in the past. Suddenly he looked at me and smiled. A whimsical smile I noted. Then after a bit of reflection he went on. Broken Leg Shaped His Life “*Do you know,’’ he said, ‘‘ that experience with the broken leg really shaped my destiny?’’ I did not understand what he meant, and said so. ‘¢Well, this is why it did. While I was lying on my back in that little Southern town, feeling the bones knit, I got one of my first comic ideas. Strange, isn’t it? There I was, in agony or near agony, and yet I could see something funny about the whole thing. I really did. One night, when all was quiet in a little boarding house I couldn’t sleep. I lay there wondering how it must have looked to the audience when I went sailing thru the air. I had a dim recollection of their laughing, so it must have looked funny. Then it occurred to me that I might burlesque an acrobatic act. ‘*That idea more than anything else made me want to get well. All of a sudden I had something to live for — and up to that time things had been dreary. I thought and planned the whole act, and it was one of the first things I did when I became a burlesque comedian. It brought laughs aplenty, and while it wasn’t my big number, still I used it frequently. ‘*But even if I hadn’t used it at all, it gave me the idea of becoming a comedian. And I suppose the fact that I was able to see the humor of that situation established me as a comiec.’? And that’s Joe E. Brown, the man who turned a compound fraeture into a good break. (Ad Plugging Feature) The Life Story of JOE E. BROWN by JOHN O’HARA noted author of such famous novels as ‘Butterfield 8’ and ‘Appointment in Samarra,’ in tomorrow’s DAILY NEWS Joe E. Brown is starring in ‘Sons O’ Guns’ now at the Theatre. (Publicity Story) John O’Hara Story To Appear in News John O’Hara, author of the best selling novels “Appointment in Samarra” and “Butterfield 8” appears as a special contributor Ofsthen2 oa: (newspaper) tomorrow, with a character study of Joe E. Brown, star of “Sons O’ Guns,” the Warner Bros. song and laugh show coming to the re eT Theatre on: :..:csch..cs The article was originally written when Mr. O’Hara was a member of the publicity staff of Warner Bros. Pictures. Page Twenty-one