The Adventures of Jane Arden (Warner Bros.) (1939)

ADVANCE PUBLICITY--THE ADVENTURES OF JANE ARDEN Rosella Towne Now Avid Reader of Comic Strips Thanks to Rosella Towne never read the newspaper cartoon strips until recently. She preferred the drama pages, and after them, the society sections. Today she’s probably the most avid cartoon strip fan in the country. A young pen and ink lady by the name of Jane Arden is responsible for the change in her taste. Warner Bros., the studio to which Miss Towne is under long term contract, decided to make a series of pictures based on the adventures of Jane Arden, the cartoon strip heroine. Readers of the several hundred newspapers which run the Arden feature were invited to select the actress they thought should play the title role in the series. Making their choice on the basis of published photographs of the players available for the part, a majority of the readers voted for Miss Towne. That was the break the tall slender actress had been waiting and working for through two and a half years. Until Jane Arden came into her life, Miss Towne had been kept in the “grooming” class. She opened doors, answered telephones and added decoration for big pictures in bit roles and played occasional second leads in less important productions. During those “grooming” days, Miss Towne suffered periods of terrible discouragement when she felt sure the door of opportunity never would open. She was in one of those blue funks when the Jane Arden series was an ‘Jane Arden’ nounced and even her best friends couldn’t convince her she had a chance of landing the part. Now that she’s actually Jane Arden, however, Miss Towne readily admits she has been extremely fortunate. She’s only twenty and it was just two and a half years ago that she graduated from Huntington Park High School in the Los Angeles suburb of that name. She spent her first year after leaving high school in study at the Hollywood Community Theatre. Herman Bing, the comedian, who was her next door neighbor, brought her to the attention of Warner picture scouts and she was signed to a contract. She’s been on the studio roster a year and a half. Miss Towne is five feet, six inches tall and has the perfect showgirl’s svelte figure. Because of her height and trim lines she was in dire danger of being shunted into “clothes horse” roles in musicals. Somehow she escaped that fate and the parts she played, small as most of them were, gave her sound training for the real opportunity Jane Arden is affording her. In the series pictures, the first of which, called “The Adventures of Jane Arden,” opens Friday at the Strand Theatre, Miss Towne is “tops.” There are no strings attached to her rating. As the girl reporter heroine, she’s an out and out star. Benny Rubin Gives All For Art-Except Pants Mutiny on the part of an actress which for a time threatened to stop production of a feature picture at the Warner Bros. Studio was finally quelled and satisfactorily explained as an amusing mixup in names. A scene in “The Adventures of Jane Arden,” the Warner Bros. picture coming to the Strana Theatre next Friday, required that comedian Benny Rubin play it sans shirt and pants, only shorts and undershirt to be his dress for the day. Inasmuch, however, as the scene was to be played at a formal dinner table, there had been some discussion between Benny and_ Director Terry Morse the night before as to whether Benny would be dressed from the waist up, or not. Later Morse decided against it. The following morning Morse called an assistant before his players were on the set. “Call Benny,” he said briskly, ‘and tell him we’ll play the scene in the raw—to wear shorts and uppers only. No other garments.” The assistant obediently went to the telephone and conveyed the message. The only trouble was he got confused in names. Instead of calling Benny’s dressing room, he called Dennie’s, Dennie Moore being the comedienne in the picture. And she thought that Director Morse, usually quietly studious and dignified, suddenly was reaching much too far for laughs. She told him so next day. Mat 101 — I5c Benny Rubin CAST Jane Arden, ROSELLA TOWNE Ed Towers........ William Gargan Dr. Vanders..James Stephenson Marvin Piermont, Benny Rubin Teenie Moore ....Dennie Moore Lola Martin...... Peggy Shannon Bill Clifton........ Edgar Edwards Prisoner ...... Hobart Cavanaugh Albert Thayer....Pierre Watkin Martha Blanton....Maris Wrixon Reporter .............. John Ridgely RUB cece sn ve Joe Devlin TRUS Wee cca Raymond Bailey Frenchman ....George Renevant Ttalian.................. Eddie Conrad Trishman .......... Robert Homans PRODUCTION STAFF Directed by...... TERRY MORSE Screen Play by Vincent Sherman Lawrence Kimble Charles Curran Based on the Comic Strip Created by......iiocte Barrett Russell E. Ross Photography by L. Wm. O’Connell, A.S.C. Art Director............ Max Parker Dialogue Director..Ted Thomas Film Editor.... Harold McLernon Sound by.............. Charles Lang Gowns by............ Milo Anderson Comedy Construction by Lex Neal Mat 202 — 30c ROSELLA TOWNE seems to be doing right well for herself. Not only is she playing the lead in "The Adventures of Jane Arden,"" Warner Bros. picture based on the exploits of the comic strip heroine, coming to the Strand Friday, but seems to have leading man, William Gargan, a bit in a whirl. William Gargan’s Ties That Bind When William Gargan came home with 200 ties, purchased from a bankrupt stock, his wife almost threw him out of the house, ties and all. Gargan, appearing in Warner Bros. ‘The Adventures of Jane Arden’, now playing at the Strand, admits that his spouse may have had good cause for her actions. ‘She wanted me to take them back. But I couldn’t do it. A deal’s a deal. You see,” he explained, “T already have about 400 ties at home. Can’t resist buying them and never could throw one away.” ROSELLA TOWNE IS DIRECT DESCENDENT OF BEN FRANKLIN Rosella Towne, who plays the part of Jane Arden, the girl reporter, in “The Adventures of Jane Arden,” the Warner Bros. picture opening Friday at the Strand Theatre, has a hereditary right to a place in the journalistic world. One of her ancestors wrote his way to lasting fame as a journalist and editor. He was Benjamin Franklin. Rosella is a direct descendent of Franklin on her mother’s side of the family, her mother being Mrs. Viola Franklin Townsend. Rosella and her mother treasure several family letters Franklin wrote, which have been handed down from generation to generation. Oddly enough one of the letters advises a stage career for one of the early daughters of the family, but Rosella can find no record that the advice was ever followed. In “The Adventures of Jane Arden,” based on the famous character of the newspaper strip, Rosella is supported by a featured cast, including William Gargan, Dennie Moore, Benny Rubin, Peggy Shannon and James Stephenson. Terry Morse directed. This is the first picture the talented young man has directed, and turns in a first class job. He has an unusually fine way of pacing the action. C9] JAMES STEPHENSON PRAISES AMERICAN GALS, FILMS, SPORT While he was working in “The Adventures of Jane Arden,” the Warner Bros. picture opening Friday at the Strand Theatre, James Stephenson, who had come to Hollywood from England less than a year ago summed up as follows his impressions of America: “American football bored me stiff until I suddenly realized I was up on my feet yelling. After that I went to the games every Saturday. I read the papers to see which college was the underdog and then yelled for that one. That gave me a very satisfying feeling. “It takes a long time to get adjusted to the very vocal audiences of Hollywood. Their reactions are so swift; but so strong and so sincere. “The women in America are so much more smartly dressed than in England. But the men are so much more poorly dressed. “The tea in the United States is unsatisfactory. I have taken to drinking coffee. The coffee is ever so much better than in England. I think the water and the climate have a great deal to do with it. “Everybody in America seems so immediately friendly that at first it disconcerted my wife. But we have since found that the people really mean it. “Honestly, American motion pictures are much better than those made anywhere else.” Magic a Hobby When Benny Rubin was touring the country in vaudeville, he became friendly with a magician who shared the same bill. Now Benny, appearing in Warner Bros. ‘The Adventures of Jane Arden,’ coming to the Strand Theatre Friday, amuses his friends with the feats his sleight of hand performer pz2l used in the act. If he ever loses his job as a comedian he can always turn to magic for a living. Sure Fire Approach To Movies Is to Be Comic Strip Pleaser The one sure fire, no fooling way to get into the movies is to be a character in a newspaper comic strip. From Flash Gordon back to Ella Cinders, their screen batting average has been high. Incomparably higher, by any graph or measuring stick, than that of any other fictional character source, be it novel, screen original, playscript, or historical biography. Colleen Moore, way back there in the silent days, was the first of the screen stars to turn to the comic pages for inspiration. She found it in the Charlie-PlumbBill Conselman character Ella Cinders, and the cartoonists in turn, by no strange coincidence, previously had used Colleen and her famous Dutch Boy bob as a model when they first sketched her on paper. Since freckle-faced Ella a dozen or more comic strip characters have been brought to a shadowy celluloid life by the cameras, prominent among them being Harold Teen, Flash Gordon, Dick Tracy, Skippy and Sooky, Popeye the Sailor Man and Little Orphan Annie, which was among the first pictures for the then juvenile Mitzie Green. Latest of the “strip pleasers” to be further glorified before the public gaze is that phenomenal newspaper person, Jane Arden, who wins where police departments, federal G-men, and rival editors and reporters invariably fail. Jane, note book and all, has been brought to cinematic life for Warner Bros. by the lovely Rosella Towne in “The Adventures of Jane Arden,” first of a series of screen features to be based on her dramatic and romantic exploits, which opens next Friday at the Strand Theatre. A rapid scanning of the comic pages of the newspapers and the motion picture subjects of the recent years reveals that apparently the process has been reversed but twice. Mickey Mouse long was a hero of the screen before be got his daily run in the news pages along with Donald Duck and his other cartoon friends and foes. He was recently joined by Charley Chan, who now graces the Sunday comics as well as the theatre screens. Real Motion Picture Warner Bros. Pictures almost went into the travel agency business for “The Adventures of Jane Arden,” first of a series of action films featuring Rosella Towne as the girl reporter of the comic strips, which opens Friday at the Strand Theatre. Rosella, as Jane Arden, travels by train, speed boat, ocean liner, sea plane and even horse and buggy. It’s a real moving picture. SYNOPSIS (NOT FOR PUBLICATON) Jane Arden (Rosella Towne ), ace news reporter, convinces Ed Towers (William Gargan), her managing editor, that she is on the trail of a big gang of smugglers. Jane manages to get into the good graces of the mob, and even fools the head of the ring, James Stephenson, by pretending to be a smuggler herself. With her girl friend, Dennie Moore, they have to go to Bermuda and return with smuggled jewels. In the meantime the gang finds out about Jane. They know who she is and are determined to silence her. Ed arrives in the nick of time, outwits the gang, and shoots it out with Stephenson. winding up a terrifically paced story with a whirlwind finish.