Sweet Adeline (Warner Bros.) (1934)

a A SWEET DELINE GSEED ON THIS PAGE: Truthful Personal Items Production Briefs AS SUGGESTED BY FILM DAILY’S POLL OF EDITORS CERES PATIOS STORWES Red Head Goes Blonde For ‘Sweet Adeline”’ Dorothy Dare, the red headed Broadway musical comedy star, became a blonde for her role in ““Sweet Adeline,’’ the Warner Bros. musical which comes to the ee eee PNG AULe ON ~s.55 ices caer Dorothy isn’t sure that she wants the change to be permanent, because she’s pretty used to her own auburn locks. However, she welcomes any opinions on the subject. If more fans decide that she has more charm as a blonde, the auburn locks will remain of the past. Dance Director Puts Fast Action In ‘Sweet Adeline’ Quick Movement Necessary In Screen Musicals, Says Bobby Connolly BY BOBBY CONNOLLY (Director of Dance Numbers in ‘‘ Sweet Adeline,’’ Warner Bros. mammoth musical which comes to tne oo.....ccccccccccccceeeeeeces Theatre OMe eee Fads grevegin cies , with Irene Dunne in the stellar role.) HE staging of dance numbers has gone a long way in the last few years, but the transition has been more gradual than in most screen developments. The first musical films, included dances and singing as incident to the main plot of a story, very much as they were pulled in by the ears in stage musicals. The dances were patterned after stage routines and the results were drab, lacking in vitality and generally ineffective. Mere good dancing is not spectacular enough for the screen. Another extreme came next, in the introduction of extravagant scenic backgrounds to lend color to the general movement of the dance. This was pleasing enough, in the first few moments of beauty or novelty, but the effect was still more or less static. Screen audiences demand action! Busby Berkeley was the first to recognize this and evolve a new type of dance number for the new medium. He put motion into his backgrounds as well as his performers. The results have been the most gorgeous effects. Probably no one will ever equal him in his particular field. The effect of continuous and beautiful mass action that he ean attain is not technique but genius. Classic Beauty Of Trene Dunne makes picture-gazing easy. Her latest is “Sweet Adeline,” the musical reminder of the good old days produced by Warner Bros. and featuring a galaxy of great comic stars, including Ned Sparks, Hugh Herbert, Donald Woods, Joseph Cawthorn, and others. Mervyn LeRoy directed. Mat No. 7—10c Meanwhile new types of screen musicals are being produced and the musical numbers in some of these demand that the dance, itself, be the dominant feature. HUGH HERBERT Mat No. 14 10c ‘“Sweet Adeline,’’ Warner Bros. latest musical spectacle, is an example of this. It is an operetta of the blithe brightness of the Viennese plays. The music is beautiful and gay. The dances must be in the same spirit and no ponderous mass movement would be in keeping. The dance, itself, must dominate. We could not transpose a stage dance to the screen or we would be up against the same thing that made the early screen dances wrong—not enough movement. How to get movement satisfying to motion picture effect, with the dance still dominating, that was the problem. The answer proves that often the obvious is overlooked because it is so apparent. I simply create dances that are all movement and then by the use of designed backgrounds, get variety of camera angles on the steps, even a simple series of steps become an amazing variety of interesting pictures to which beauty is added by background. Of course the dances themselves must be well routined. I use no one in my choruses, except well trained dancers. In fact, practically every one of my specialty girls is a solo danseuse. In the ‘‘Lonely Feet’’ number of ‘‘Sweet Adeline,’’ we use the unusual angles resulting from semi-circular stairs, with an eccentric are to the bottom portion. Before coming to Hollywood, and in spite of all the musical comedies I have staged, I never dreamed it would be possible to get the effects that come from a studied use of the camera. Mervyn LeRoy, whose record of hits numbers such outstanding successes as “I Am a Fugitive From a Chain Gang,” “Gold Diggers of 1933,” “Tugboat Annie” and many others, reaches a new high with his latest for Warner Bros., “Sweet Adeline” by name. It stars Irene Dunne and a cast of comedy favorites, and will be seen at the ....... Ree ll Theatre soon. Mat No. 9—20c Order directly from Editor, Merchandising Plan Le Roy Is Deep Student of Background of Every Film Youngest Ace Director Mastered Period Data Before Starting “Sweet Adeline” ERVYN LeROY, youngest of Hollywood’s ace directors, ‘in his very early thirties, somehow managed to find time for a career on the stage before making thirty-one fea ture pictures, the latest of which is the Warner Bros. musical ““Sweet Adeline,’’ now showing at the Theatre. LeRoy has had a crowded life, but plans still greater activity from now on. As a boy, he was in vaudeville but he sensed adventure in the then doubtful field of motion pictures. He had ideas—lots of them— and from the very first has had a different technique from that of any other director. He has not made merely a number of pictures, but numbers among them such outstanding ones as “Little Caesar,” “Five Star Final,” “I Am a Fugitive From a Chain Gang,” “Gold Diggers of 1933,” “Tug Boat Annie” and “Happiness Ahead.” He has three self-imposed rules: he never makes a story he doesn’t like. He never starts shooting until the script suits him from the first scene to the last. He never makes the same kind of story twice. When he finds a story that suits him, he starts a series of friendly fights with the writer and supervisor. It is either done his way without argument, or he compromises by arguing first and then having it done his way. When the first draft of the script is submitted, he studies it carefully and when the necessary changes are agreed upon, he waits for the completed script. He will not be hurried into starting his production on the promise that the final script “will be ready by the time you are ready to shoot.” His answer is always the same, “It will be ready BEFORE I shoot.” In “Sweet Adeline,” he has a picture laid in a period before he was born. He studied and read for weeks in an effort to familiarize himself with it. His technical staff wns amazed when he ordered a certain type of champagne bucket to be removed from the set because it was not in use until two years after the year of the scene. When they gave him an argument, he waited for them to investigate the matter further. They found he was right. MERVYN LeROY Mat No. 11 10¢ He is ruthless as to detail, but interesting to watch, mainly because he knows his business. That is the most obvious thing about this comparative youngster who has already gone so far. Maybe, also, it’s the reason for it. “Sweet Adeline” is a mammoth musical spectacle based on the sensational Broadway hit by Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II, who also wrote the music and lyrics, Irene Dunne has the stellar role with Donald Woods playing opposite her. Others in the east inelude Hugh Herbert, Louis Calhern and Ned Sparks. Page Nine