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

Frog Jump Expert Imported To Hollywood For ‘Mark Twain’ Alfred Jermy, a tall, lean young man with a mountaineer’s stride, came down to Hollywood to show the movie folks how to stage a frog jumping contest. Mr. Jermy came from Angels Camp, a remote town in the California High Sierras where frog-jumping is not only a sport but a community tradition. Mark Twain started it all away back in the Sixties when he wrote a story about two city slickers taking most of the gold dust out of Angels Camp by beating the town champion with a common swamp frog. They filled the champ so full of buckshot he couldn’t budge and managed to get out of town without being filled with that same buckshot themselves. Angels Camp Jumps Since the late Twenties, the citizens of Angels Camp have gotten all the dust back and more by bringing the city slickers in to watch their annual frog jumping contests. Mr. Jermy has been chairman of these recent frog jubilees, and as the world’s outstanding authority on leaving batrachians, he was brought to Hollywood as a technical adviser by Jesse L. Lasky, the veteran movie producer. Mr. Lasky wanted all the Angels Camp trimmings for the frog jumping contest in his Warner Bros.’ picture, “The Adventures of Mark Twain,” which co-stars Fredric March and Alexis Smith, opening tonight at the Strand. Mr. Jermy brought fortyseven Angels Camp frogs and a sense of humor with him. He needed the sense of humor to stand the frogs’ midnight chorus in his Pullman bedroom. Expert in Huddle Technical expert Jermy went into a huddle with Producer Laskv and Irving Rapper, director of the picture. “We’re having Mark Twain and Steve Gillis jump the common swamp frog against Bret Harte’s champion, Dan’l Webster. Of course Mark doesn’t know Steve has filled Dan’l with buckshot.” Mr. Jermy waived that instance of movie tampering with Angels Camp tradition. He was there to supply technical details, not the scenario. “You'll need a parade,” he said. “With an old fashioned brass band,” suggested Producer Lasky. Before he became showman extraordinary, Mr. Lasky was a brass band cornetist. “You need judges for measuring the jumps,” proceeded expert Jermy, “and a head judge for making final decisions.” “We'll get good comedy characters,” declared Director Rapper. “A great chance to work in some funny business when they measure the jumps.” Conklin Suggested “Chester Conklin is just the man for one of those parts.” enthused Producer Lasky. “With his walrus mustache makeup.” “The judges should wear costumes,” said Mr. Jermy. “Ours _ wear miners’ red shirts.” “We'll put ours in frock coats and top hats,’ decided Mr. Lasky. “Make them more picturesque.” “How about putting Mark Twain and Steve Gillis, that’s Fredric March and Alan Hale, on common scrubby horses and Bret Harte, he’s John Carradine, on a fancy high stepper, for contrast?” Mr. Lasky said that would be fine, but the frogs must be featured in the parade. “We'll have Chester Conklin ride a white mule and carry the two frogs,’ he declared. Mat 210—30c The avid look in the eyes of Mark Twain (Fredric March, above left) and his mining partner, Steve Gillis (Alan Hale, above right) has nothing to do with Bret Harte’s (John Carradine, above center) literary in heritance. It’s directed solely at the batrachian (frog, to you!) in the palm of his hand, which plays a solid part in Warner’s “The Adventures of Mark Twain,” opening tonight at the Strand, with co-stars Fredric. March and Alexis Smith. pa tend “He’ll have Brete Harte’s Dan’l Webster in a gilded cage, and Mark Twain’s scrub in a show box. For contrast.” The parade settled, expert Jermy went into details of how frogs jumped. He said in Angels Camp they put them down in a circle and let them hop for distance. Each entrant gets three consecutive jumps for his mark. “What if they don’t jump?” asked Director Rapper. “Sometimes they don’t,” said expert Jermy. “That’s why I brought forty-seven live ones from Angels with me.” “When they feel those camera lights, they’ll jump,” Producer Lasky predicted confidently. When technical adviser Jermy arrived at the location where the scenes were to be shot he found he had seventy-two frogs instead of forty-seven. His champs were hopelessly mixed with Hollywood frogs. “We need an extra long jumper to play Mark Twain’s frog,” Mr. Lasky said anxiously. Jermy reached into the tank and pulled out a whopper. He said he wished he could be sure it was an Angels Camp frog. He set it down and the frog took off with a magnificent bound, and followed with two more. Mr. Jermy’s eyes popped and Mr. Lasky called for a tape measure. The jump measured fifteen feet, ten and three quarter inches. Mr. Jermy said that was three quarters of an inch beyond the world’s record, but it wasn’t official because the frog hadn’t jumped from a regular ring. Record or no record, Mr. Jermy said when he got through with this job he was going back to Angels Camp and show the folks how Hollywood staged a frog jump. Lovely Alexis Smith, In Twain’ At Strand, [Is Dad’s Girl Alexis Smith, who establishes herself more firmly in Hollywood’s stellar ranks in Warner’ Bros.’ forthcoming “The Adventures of Mark Twain,” opposite Fredric March, is her dad’s girl. She was named for him, in the first place, and her most interesting accomplishments in her chosen field of screen acting are aimed, primarily, at pleasing him. She is an only child, daughter of Alexander and t goes without he guiding Heenius of Alexis’ presMat 107—15¢ ent busy life, Alexis Smith her counsellor, comforter and “best friend and severest critic.” But it is her dad who seems usually to be uppermost in Alexis’ mind when she is figuring out the way she should play a scene in “The Constant Nymph” or “Gentleman Jim” or any of her other pictures. It is her father whom she quotes on any and all subjects during any friendly arguments on the set and it is her father she worries about when her dog chews up the morning paper or digs into the Smith family’s victory garden. The highest compliment she ever pays herself— and probably the highest in her own mental category—is when she reports that her father saw a picture in which she played a role and liked her in it. Alexis’ father is a master salesman and as such is probably already pre-sold on his daughter’s work in pictures, but Alexis will spend any necessary amount of time and energy in an effort to please him particularly. There have been other adventurers—admitting, for the sake of analogy, that a Hollywood career is essentially an adventure—in the family from which Alexis stems. Her grandfather, Fred Smith, was a gold miner in South Africa. On her mother’s side, her grandfather, James Fitzsimmons, mined for gold in Alaska. Alexis is finding her gold, and very successfully, these days in Hollywood, which is a place about half-way between these other “fields.” Alexis and her father make a refreshing and uncommon com Twain Expert's One Track Mind When Dick Lemon, Mississippi River steamboat expert from East St. Louis, Ill., arrived in Hollywood to act as special technical advisor for Warner Bros.’ “‘The Adventures of Mark Twain,” starring Fredric March and Alexis Smith, now playing at the Strand, he found no one waiting to greet him. A representative of producer Jesse L. Lasky had missed him in the crowd. Hours passed and Lemon failed to report at the studio. Finally Lasky told his secretary he had an idea where Lemon could be found and suggested a certain hotel. The call was made and Lemon was there. The: hotel was the Mark Twain. Twain’s Genius Scored (In Film) On “The Adventures of Mark Twain” set at Warner Bros., Fredric March was getting a fine dressing down from Walter Hampden, who played his prospective father-in-law. “Sit down, Mr. Clemens—or Twain,” Hampden said. “I am told that you are supposedly a writer. Perhaps we here have a little different conception of what a writer is.” He pointed to well filled bookshelves in the library setting. “Emerson, Longfellow, Whittier, Oliver Wendell Holmes : great shadowy names—like gods on Olympus. We think of those as writers.” The scene ended and Hampden stood chatting with March and director Irving Rapper. “T met Mark Twain once,” he recalled. “He came backstage. He looked exactly like the portraits with which we are all so familiar. He told me how much he had enjoyed the play and my performance. It is one of the highlights of my memories. “T never thought then I would be belittling his genius as a writer—even in a movie.” “The Adventures of Mark Twain,” opening tonight at the Strand Theatre, co-stars Fredric March and Alexis Smith as Mr. and Mrs. Mark Twain. ‘Mark bination in Hollywood, where a great number of young women anxious to see their names in lights venture to the picture capital with their mothers from homes that have been broken by deaths or divorce. Alexis has always lived at home, a member of the Smith family, sharing in its anonymity as well as in its family problems, economical, social and educational. Her turn to dramatics, which took place long before she ever dared suppose she would be noticed for motion picture work, was taken with her father’s knowledge and approval—after Alexis had convinced him in the ways that a daughter usually influences a doting father that such was the life she wanted to live and the career she wished to follow. For all her love and admiration for her father, Alexis is as feminine as any average twentyyear-old girl. She likes puns and dolls—when other children are playing with them—keeps a scrapbook and remembers favorite telephone numbers. She raids the family refrigerator at night, talks pig Latin and likes to color Easter eggs. Even so, it is a safe bet that Alexis is her dad’s girl—and is headed to full stardom with his blessing. Film Mother, Daughter, Only 3 Years Apart It’s a wise observer who can tell mother from daughter on the Hollywood motion picture sets these days. Like Kipling’s Julia O’Grady and the colonel’s lady, the cinema mammas and the film daughters are more than apt to be sisters—under the greasepaint. A couple of former college coecs, not more than three years apart as the birthdays fall, met on the set of a two million dollar production not long ago. “Hello mom,” said the exU.C.L.A. co-ed to the former Los Angeles City College co-ed. “What’s cooking?” “Greetings, offspring,” replied the City College Alumnus to'the late Uclan. “The gas is burning and high drama is brewing.” Alexis Smith, 21, and Joyce Reynolds, 19, were exchanging social amenities before plunging into the serious business of portraying mother and daughter in the Warner Bros. production, “The Adventures of Mark Twain,” which co-stars Fredric March and Miss Smith. Before the picture was ended, Miss Smith was to treble her age— in makeup—Miss Reynolds to double hers. To the young ladies involved, there was nothing especially extraordinary about the motherdaughter relationship. They’d been around the _ studio long enough to consider it a normal part of the fabulous business of making motion pictures. As the beautiful, stately, and gracefully aging Olivia Langdon Clemens and the blossoming Clara Clemens, their onstage demeanor was unimpeachably correct. If daughter Clara, nee Miss Reynolds, was ever tempted to remind her mother they had been just three years apart in cutting classes, or to launch a discussion on the comparative wolfing techniques of U.C.L.A. and City College men, she smothered the temptations. Still MT 545: Mat 103-15c DONALD CRISP “Honestly,” she confessed later, “I’d have been afraid to do anything like that. It would have seemed disrespectful.” Miss Smith admitted a similar experience in reverse. “T began to feel positively motherly toward Joyce,’ she said. “I’d find myself thinking— my, she’s a sweet child. Then I’d come to, and say to myself— child, my little finger! She’s practically as old as you are, you female Methuselah!” It’s enough to revive the old controversy about which comes first, the chicken or the egg. “The Adventures of Mark Twain” opens Friday at the Strand. 27