The Adventures of Mark Twain (Warner Bros.) (1944)

kredric March’s Imposing Record— Fourteen Years, horty-Light Films In fourteen years, Fredric March has appeared in exactly forty-eight motion pictures, and has played oppusite forty-one different feminine stars or leading women. Three of those feminine stars are now dead. Several are no longer in pictures. A substantial number have subsequently married, been divorced, or become mothers during the years since they worked with March. Of his pictures, March has seen some become great boxoffice successes and take their places among the more enduring of the screen’s contributions. He has watched others slip into the niche of comfortable mediocrity as good program entertainers. He has been fortunate in seeing few of his films flop. Among the few there is one he insists closed the Paramount eastern studios in Astoria. He has portrayed detective, soldier, actor, statesman, poet, physician, pirate, author, scientist, murderer and minister— been hero, scoundrel, vagabond and lover. Won Academy Award One of his pictures brought him an Academy Award for the best performance of the year. Others narrowly missed that mark. A few brought him unmerciful pannings. He _ has searcely known a dull moment in the whole fourteen years and forty-eight pictures. Jeanne Eagles, Lilyan Tashman and Carole Lombard are the three deceased stars to whom March once made ardent cinematic love. He appeared with Miss Eagles in “Jealousy,” her last picture. Miss Tashman was one of his two leading ladies in “The Marriage Playground.” The other was Mary Brian, seldom active in films these days. Carole Lombard was his starring partner in two pictures, “The Eagle and the Hawk,” and “Nothing Sacred.” Ruth Chatterton was the feminine star of his first picture, “The Dummy.” Clara Bow was the star of the second, “The Wild Party.” They have long been absent from the screen. Colleen Moore, Nancy Carroll, Anna Sten and Francesca Gaal are among his other partners who have been at least temporarily lost to pictures. Was Nearly Teamed The nearest he has come to being “teamed” during his fourteen years was with Claudette Colbert. He has done four pictures with her — “Manslaughter,” “Honor Among Lovers,” “The Sign of the Cross” and “Tonight is Ours.” The last two were consecutive. One of the great surprises of his career was having a girl named Smith as his starring partner. She’s Alexis Smith, who plays Mrs. Mark Twain, his wife, in his current Warner Bros. picture, “The Adventures of Mark Twain,” which is now playing at the Strand Theatre. An actress named Florence Eldridge has worked with him in three pictures, only one less than Miss Colbert. They’re teamed in real life. She’s Mrs. Fredric March. Sisters Were Leads Among his forty-one feminine leads, two have been sisters. Constance Bennett played opposite him in “The Affairs of Cellini.” Joan Bennett was his heroine in “Trade Winds.” Greta Garbo, Katharine Hepburn, Joan Crawford, Martha Scott, Loretta Young, Margaret Sullavan, Miriam Hopkins, Kay Francis, Norma Shearer, Sylvia Sidney, Ina Claire, Tallulah Bankhead, Mary Astor, Ann Harding, Olivia De Havil 26 Still March 1; Mat 209—30c Fredric March is starred with Alexis Smith in the Warner Bros. pro duction of “The Adventures of Mark Twain,” opening Theatre. March is cast as Mark Twain. coco eee cee land, Merle Oberon, Janet Gaynor, Virginia Bruce, Betty Field and Veronica Lake are among the other screen beauties he has loved and won or lost. “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,” the picture that brought him his Academy Award, was the most difficult he has ever done. There were two reasons—the dual personality he had to characterize, and the weird makeup of Dr. Jekyll. Second Hardest Role As the most interesting, and second most difficult of his forty-eight characterizations, he lists the current Mark Twain. Bringing as famous and generally revered a real-life character as Twain to the screen is at the a task filled with perils and pitfalls, he says. Both for that reason and the fact that he was a Twain devotee long before he signed to do the part, he finds the job a highlight of an anything but dull career. The greatest spiritual uplift he ever derived from a picture came from “One Foot in Heaven,” in which he played the Rev. Spence. He says it did him more good than a_ book full of sermons. Learned Lesson The’ greatest lesson he’s learned from his screen experience is that by taking advantage of every moment and opportunity a lot of living can be crowded into fourteen years. Screen Star Offers Safe Driving Rule In case you‘re not up on your P’s and Q’s for safe driying, you might take a tip from Alexis Smith, lovely co-star with Fredric March in Warner Bros.’ “‘The Adventures of Mark Twain,” coming to the Strand on Friday. Miss Smith, an average woman driver who admits she seldom if ever thinks to look at her speedometer, has adopted an old police test for safe driving—and_ tire _conservation. The Warner Bros.’ — star drives with an empty milk bottle on the car’s floor. If she drives too fast the bottle slides. If she starts or stops too suddenly, the bottle tips over. It’s just as simple as that. Miss Smith she lifted the idea from Homer confided that Garrison of Austin, State Police Director. Says Mr. Garrison: ‘This device has long been used as a test for smooth, safe driving. The only thing to be careful of is to place the bottle on the floor on the driver's right side. Otherwise it may _ interfere with operation of the car.’ Texas, Literary Greats Seen in Movie Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Ralph Waldo Emerson, John Greenleaf Whittier and Mark Twain banqueted together at Warner Bros. studio recently. The occasion was the reenactment of an historic birthday dinner in Whittier’s honor for the movie, “The Adventures of Mark Twain.” Fredric March played. Twain, Davidson Clark was Longfellow, Burr Caruth portrayed Holmes, Brandon Hurst characterized Emerson and Harry Hilliard was Whittier, the guest of honor. In every physical detail, even to the seating arrangement of the distinguished guests, the movie re-enactment was faithful to the original banquet. It was the makeup of the literary greats that provided startling realism, however. “It’s positively ghostly,” director Irving Rapper expressed the consensus. “T feel as though I were working with portraits who’d stepped out of their frames.” Setting Some Kind Of New Record, Jumping Frog Jumps Into Picture Movie fans have seen numerous pictures built around a horse or a dog, have watched chimpanzees, elephants and other animals—even the lowly gopher—featured in important scenes in others. Now comes a group of amphibious actors to play an important part in a film. The short story, “The JumpFrog of ing Calaveras,” launched the | ous—and_ vice s versa —is refenacted in “The Adventures of Mark Twain.” Warner Bros. took no chances on using amateur jumping frogs. Producer Jesse L. Lasky and Director Irving Rapper sent to Mat 105—15c Donald Crisp Angels Camp, Calif., site of the original contest and of its annual revival, for 47 expert jumpers and with them came Alfred Jermy, chairman of the frog jubilee, to serve as technical adviser. Thus the modern jumping frogs of Calaveras became, temporarily, the jumping frogs of Calabasas—for this sequence was made on location at the studio’s ranch at Calabasas. The jumping frogs incident in the life of Samuel Langhorne Clemens (Twain) took part before his marriage, so Alexis Smith does not appear in this sequence in the picture. But very much in evidence, along with the frogs, are Fredric March as Mark Twain, Alan Hale as his mining prospector partner, John Carradine as Bret Harte, owner of the champion, “Dan’l Webster,” which they are challenging, and walrus-mustached Chester Conklin as the judge of the contest. The prop department argued it couldn’t supply enough flies and other insects to feed the Calaveras frogs at the Burbank studio, so they were taken out to Calabasas and dumped into a pond where they could forage for themselves, along with about 40 ordinary, plebian frogs. Thus it was never definitely known whether it was Calaveras or Calabasas frogs which emulated the buckshot-laden “Dan’l Webster” and the one which outjumped him in the final shots for the contest sequence. It seems that the Angels Camp jumpers reach the zenith of their prowess in a single year and new would-be champions are trained annually, so the Calaveras frogs were allowed to remain at Calabasas. Consequently, when the sequence was inished, someone suggested that a frog-legs dinner might be in order for co-stars March and Alexis Smith and others of the cast and crew. Lasky nixed that idea. “I’ve never believed in biting the hand that feeds you—so why eat the frog legs that jump for you?” he said. ‘Tom Sawyer’ Rewritten For é ® j t Twain’ Film The opening paragraphs of one of the great books produced by an American are being meticulously copied at the Warner Bros. studio in the same long hand in which they were originally written. The page of decipherable if not-too-perfect script, as completed thus far, reads: “Tom!” No answer. “Tom!” No answer. “What’s gone with the boy, I wonder? You Tom!” A great many lovers of Mark Twain will recognize in those phrases the opening’ chapter «2 “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer,” even though few have probably ever seen them as they were originally put down in Mark Twain’s own handwriting. Fredric March will pen them —or appear to do so—in the Warner Bros. version of “The Adventures of Mark Twain,” which is being produced at that studio by Jesse L. Lasky, the man who planned and produced “Sergeant York” for this same company. But before March takes pen in hand to start one of the memorable literary ventures in the nation’s memory, G. T. Ellis, handwriting expert for the studio, will have those lines penned in an almost exact replica of the original, for use before the camera. March may start bravely on the first line, his hand in the camera and a pen in that hand and he may even be shown putting the final peculiar twist on the bottom of the letter “y” that was Mark Twain’s habit, but the finished page of manuscript, and many more to be seen briefly through the story, will be the work of G. T. Ellis. Mat 102—15c ALAN HALE Ellis is an “old hand” at the motion picture insert business. He recently completed perfect copies of the signature of George M. Cohan, on letters, sheet music and at the foot of famous contracts for “Yankee Doodle Dandy.” Not long before that he scrawled “John Hancock” for the camera at the foot of the Declaration of Independence for a short subject made under that name. Signing names is simple forgery for Ellis, who still signs only his own checks. The job of copying whole pages of Mark Twain manuscript, which will flow before the camera in only momentary montage sequences, is a more difficult matter, however, and he has really perspired over the job.