The Cowboy Quarterback (Warner Bros.) (1939)

PUBLICITY Advance Feature Plays Comic ‘Heavy’ TWO PLANES SEEN ram's Wile FUR CLAD COMIC IN FILM PRESENT A WIDE CONTRAST By accident rather than design, one of the oldest and shakiest of airplanes and one of the most modern, luxurious skyliners represent the aviation industry in the Warner Bros. comedy, “The Cowboy Quarterback,” which opens next Friday at the Strand Theatre. It was the unhappy fate of William Demarest, playing a professional football scout, to ride in the old air buggy. With a stunt flier as pilot, the story has him invading the sticks in search of an almost fabled hick football player, portrayed by Bert Wheeler. The plane had to be rickety and creaky, for Di; rector Noel Smith got some comedy effects out of that and a line of the pilot’s: “I’d have got you here sooner, only one of the wings is a little loose.” Incidentally, the pilot confides to his passenger, when it’s too late to get out and walk, that he “hasn’t had a crackup since I began flyin’ a plane, and that’s almost a month now!” To carry this bit of good clean fun to its logical end, the old crate had to make a spectacular, typically amateur-pilot landing. That is, it had to hit the ground hard, bounce twenty feet in the air, hit again, bounce some more — teetering and staggering with now the tail high, now dragging its skid, until it finally came to rest. The plane that was used is owned by Warner Bros., and it has a fairly good motor disguised as one of the old-timers. One of the earliest small cabin planes, it is a four-seater of mongrel manufacture, originally built by a private hobbyist at Santa Monica, Calif. Marie Wilson and Gloria Dickson used the modern plane — a sleek, glistening, skysleeper normally on regular Los Angelesto-New York service. It was relieved of its cross-country dash for two days, while scenes of the picture were filmed at Grand Central Airport near Burbank. For the picture it merely made take-offs and landings and served as comedy background. In Her Latest Film for First Time Marie Wilson was a little worried when she was made a comedy brat, a pest, a thorn in everybody’s side, in her latest film at the Warner Bros. Studio. “T have to admit, though, that it’s my best acting chance to date, so far as variety goes,” said Marie. “I’ve never done anything like it before. I’ve been dumb but sweet before. This time I’m dumb but ornery!” The part was in “The Cowboy Quarterback,” the comedy about professional football coming to the Strand Theatre next Friday, in which Bert Wheeler is a hick grid star and Marie his boss, manager and sweetheart. She manages, in the picture, to make everyone hate genial little Bert, “not a bad guy if he didn’t have that dame around in our hair!” as fellow-comedian Eddie Foy, Jr., puts it. In fact, Marie is to “The Cowboy Quarterback,” the comedy caricature of what Bette Davis was to “Of Human Bondage.” People thirst to twine their fingers around her slender white neck and squeeze. Giant-muscled Mat 108 — 15c Marie Wilson appears in “Cowboy Quarterback” at the Strand Theaire. football players, portrayed by several famous pro stars and U.S.C.’s 1939 squad, ache to use her for a football. Above all, William Demarest, Gloria Dickson and_ choleric coach Charles Wilson want her life’s blood. In fact nobody loves her in the picture but faithful Bert and his rival, a drug-store cowboy played by DeWolf Hopper. “It’s the first time I’ve had anybody hate me, on the screen,” said Marie, with that characteristic wistful, far-away look. Some people might call it a vague look. Within the scope of her characterizations, hitherto, Marie has demonstrated considerable versatility. Always pretending to be a bit fuzzy-witted (some of her friends insist she’s really one of the keenest, canniest girls on the screen but she keeps the fact well concealed!) she has stolen pictures right and left in the days when she was a busy supporting player instead of a star. She marched away with ‘Boy Meets Girl” from the terrifically formidable competition of those three sharp-shooters, James Cagney, Pat O’Brien and Ralph Bellamy. Allen Jenkins and Johnnie “Scat? Davis couldn’t win from Marie in “Sweepstakes Winner.” COLD PUT WILSON IN PROPER VOICE The script said Marie Wilson was to “shout herself hoarse.” But when she appeared at the Pasadena Rose Bowl one day so hoarse from a cold that she could hardly talk, obviously she couldn’t do a shouting scene for the Warner Bros. football comedy, “The Cowboy Quarteback,” opening Friday at the Strand. That hardly gave Director Noel Smith and his assistant, Les Guthrie, any pause at all, for the script also had lines for her to say after she had become hoarse. ‘‘Just change the schedule,” said Smith. It was done, and that saved Marie practicing reading lines in the hoarse, frog-like croak recommended in the script’s stage directions. All she had to do was read her lines; her cold took care of the croaking. Mat 207 — 30c Bert Wheeler returns to the screen in the type comedy role for which he is famous in “Cowboy Quarterback,” now at the Strand Theatre. He is shown with Marie Wilson in a scene from the picture. Page Four Marie Is Hostess Marie Wilson recently chose another fan from among her following to entertain for a few days in Hollywood, and on the set of her latest Warner Bros, picture, “The Cowboy Quarterback,” which opens Friday at the Strand Theatre. The fan was _ twenty-yearold Mary Baine of Dubuque, Ia., who stopped by, on Marie’s invitation, en route to the San Francisco Fair. About once a year, Marie entertains a fan, selected at random’ from among her girl followers. WILSON FINDS G00D DEEDS BRING LUCK Marie Wilson firmly believes the folks who helped her in her struggling days will be repaid in good luck as well as gratitude. Lately, this belief is getting some substantiation. Gas station attendents who used to lend her fuel for hopeful forays around the studios, jobseeking, have not only all been paid with interest by Marie, but they’ve become successful men. One is a building contractor. One had some property near the Skiddoo Mine in the Mojave Desert which he sold for a young fortune. Another is western sales manager for an auto accessory concern, and the remaining one is a real estate man. All this came out because Marie herself is doing so many good deeds for newcomers. It will inevitably bring her good luck, she explained one day on the set of the Warner Bros. comedy, “The Cowboy Quarterback,” which opens next Friday at the Strand Theatre. Moreover, doing good for others, she says, is its own reward, even if it doesn’t concretely reward the good deed doer. Wheeler Still Spry Bert Wheeler, while clowning with the University of Southern California football players who worked with him in Warner Bros.’ pro football comedy, “The Cowboy Quarterback,” which opens next Friday at the Strand Theatre, astonished the boys by doing a one-handed hand stand. They didn’t know he once did acrobatics in vaudeville. U.S. 0, PRO TEAMS FEATURED IN FILM Playing featured roles in “Cowboy Quarterback,” the satiric football comedy which opens at the Strand Theatre on Friday, are fourteen men from the University of Southern California’s mighty 1939 squad, headed by Ambrose Schindler, and an aggregation of famous professional stars led by “Dutch” Hendrian. The two teams battle each other in the end of the picture with the championship title at stake. The amateur gridders received regular dress-extra wages, $16.50 a day. College heads have decided that this does not injure their amateur standing because, in front of the cameras, they are not football players but actors even when they play football. The pro gridironmen hail from Georgetown, Yale, St. Mary’s, Georgia Tech, Northwestern, Minnesota, Notre Dame, Army, S. M. U. and U. S. C. and range in class vintage from ’29 to ’38. Many of their feats, such as bullet passes and Hendrian’s uncanny place kicking, are seen in the film featuring Bert Wheeler and Marie Wilson. SET NEW WEIGHT REDUCING RECORD Bert Wheeler thinks he set a record for rapid reducing in the 150-pound class when he sweated off six pounds within an hour. He did the stunt at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena while making football scenes for the Warner Bros. comedy, “The Cowboy Quarterback,” which opens next Friday at the Strand Theatre. The scenes consisted of giving an exhibition of broken-field running through a squad of huskies composed chiefly of University of Southern California gridders. Just the running didn’t account for that six-pound weight drop, however. He did it by wearing a fur coat. Pasadena papers, tipped off that he was going to do the stunt, sent out reporters and photographers, chiefly because — whatever the city’s official weather report says — on the field it was 98 degrees! Of course, it was all for his art and Director Noel Smith. Bert is a cowboy comic in the story, and wears the fur coat (although of course it’s supposed to be fur coat weather) to demonstrate how good he is. The U.S. C. boys, for their art, carefully fumbled him and permitted him to make a touchdown, football, fur coat and all. Double-Jointed Pianist Eddie Foy, Jr., won a bet from Marie Wilson one day on the set of “The Cowboy Quarterback,” the Warner Bros. comedy coming to the Strand Theatre next Friday. She wagered the daily soft-drink treat for the entire company that he couldn’t throw both elbows out of joint and then, in that condition, play the piano. He did so, with the greatest of ease. Now, says Marie, anything is possible. It seems she never saw Eddie do the same trick in vaudeville. Hopper Bought Costume Tall, dark ’n’ handsome DeWolf Hopper was so proud of a cowboy outfit he wore in Warner Bros.’ “The Cowboy Quarterback,” which opens Friday at the Strand Theatre, that he has purchased it from the studio wardrobe department and now parades it occasionally on Hollywood horseback paths. It by far out-dazzles anything Gene Autry, Buck Jones, Hoot Gibson or other film cowboys have worn. Mat 208 — 30c Bert Wheeler and Marie Wilson sit head and shoulders above members of the 1939 University of Southern California gridiron squad in this scene from “Cowboy Quarterback,” the Strand football comedy.