The Petrified Forest (Warner Bros.) (1936)

“THE PETRIFIED FOREST” Arizona Desert Is Built For ‘‘Petrified Forest”’ Used For Interior Settings While Exteriors Were Made On Location It took nature a million years or more to make a desert. It took Art Director John Hughes and his staff two weeks to build a desert at the Warner Bros. studio. It is only a small desert to be sure, 400 by 200 feet to be exact, but it is com plete in every detail. There are cacti, sage-brush, bleached cow skulls, old wagon wheels, rusty canteens, desert turtles, rock ledges, and rolling tumble-weeds. Hughes doesn’t go about building deserts because he likes them. He did it because Director Archie Mayo needed a piece of arid country for “The Petrified Forest,” the Warner Bros. picture which Comes tosthe oo. Theatre Ole neers Most of the action of the pieture takes place in a barbecue stand and gas station in the center of the Arizona desert. But you can’t shoot the interior of the place without seeing some sand, rocks and cactus through the windows. Thus the need for desert country. Before building the set, which occupies the same stage where stood the forest for “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” Mr. Hughes went to the Petrified Forest which is one of the strange sights of Arizona, and made scores of sketches. Returning, he had the stage cleared. Then 100 truck loads of sand and ten truck loads of rocks were spread on the stage. All around the walls, canvas was hung and on it were painted desert scenes. The rock and sand was then banked to blend with the background. Once the actual desert was built, the green gang went to work. Ninety giant cacti, some over fifteen feet tall, were purchased at a cost of $1000. Sagebrush was brought from Mojave and transplanted. A truck load of old wheels, bones and sun dried wood was scattered through the brush. In the center of the stage “The Petrified Forest” Bar-B-Q stand and service station in which Leslie Howard finds Bette Davis, was erected. It was an exact copy of such a stand found by Hughes in Arizona. On Hughes’ desert, wind ma Actor Is Expert Chess Player If the time ever came when Humphrey Bogart, the killer in Warner Bros.’ ‘‘The Petrified Forest,’’ now showing at the ................ Theatre, couldn’t find work as an actor, he could make his living playing chess. Last year, in New York, Bogart averaged ten dollars a week playing chess at twenty-five cents a game in various chess clubs in New York. He usually plays two opponents at once. chines kick up miniature sand storms. Sun ares drench it with pitiless rays. Dust-smeared cars drive along the road steaming like tea kettles. Tumbleweeds roll along and lodge against the sagebrush and cacti. Telephone poles march across the stretch of sand. It is Hughes’ desert that you see through the windows of the barbecue stand in the picture. But it is the real Arizona desert you see in exterior shots. For as soon as the interiors were made, Director Mayo and his troupe journeyed to the desert for a couple of weeks. It was no hardship for already Howard, Miss Davis, Genevieve Tobin, Porter Hall, Charley Grapewin, Dick Foran and Humphrey Bogart had got accustomed to the desert life on the Warner Bros. stage. The picture is the thrilling drama of a man who has drained the bitter cup of disillusionment, but who finds himself through an heroie sacrifice for love. The screen play is by Charles Kenyon and Delmer Daves, based on the play by Robert Emmet Sherwood. One Hour To Live se Leslie Howard (center) knew that, within the hour, Humphrey Bogart (left) the killer of the mesa, would end his earthly troubles—but for that hour the lover of ‘‘Of Human Bondage’’ could hold Bette Davis, the most ‘‘Dangerous’’ woman of the screen, in his arms, in ‘‘ The Petrified Forest’’ which comes to the RS ee Theatre: 00s... Bac Mat No. 201—20c Page Twenty Pueotietty © Leslie Howard Was Just Too Tired To Die In Film Star In “‘Petrified Forest’”” Likes To “Kick Off” With Tea Inside Him Leslie Howard was too tired to die. It was late in the afternoon. All day, Howard, Humphrey Bogart, Bette Davis, Genevieve Tobin and the other players in ‘‘The. Petrified Forest,’’ the Warner Bros. picture which comes to the .............. Theatre on .........0....... , had been lying on the floor listening to the deadly rhythm of a machine gun. “Tl die tomorrow morning,” Howard told Director Archie L. Mayo. “Let’s have a cup of tea now.” Howard wasn’t being temperamental. He felt that a man must be full of vitality even to die properly on the screen. He is really an authority on dying. For seven months he “died” nightly at the hands of Humphrey Bogart when “The Petrified Forest” was running in New York. Just before the final curtain, Bogart, as “Duke Mantee” the inarticulate desperado, obliged the despondent Howard by putting a bullet through his heart. For the screen version of the Robert Sherwood play, Howard only had to die onee. Yet he felt he could die better in the morning, right after breakfast. He often asks directors to postpone until morning important scenes scheduled for late afternoon, On the stage, according to Howard, it doesn’t matter if one is tired or out of sorts. The stage audience seldom, if ever, notices that a player is indisposed. “T have been so tired I could hardly stand, yet I have died satisfactorily on the stage,” Howard says. “Often during the stage run of “The Petrified Forest” I felt not at all like dying, but the audience didn’t know it. No one complained. No one noticed that I kicked the bucket without my usual verve.” The screen is different, he says. The camera looks right inside the player and reveals what’s going on in his mind. Fatigue and illness show on the screen very plainly. “No director in the world can ‘pull’ a good performance from a player who is out of sorts,” Howard says. “It’s just a waste of time to try. In looking at the rushes, I often notice that scenes taken late in the day are poor in comparison to those taken when the company is fresh. In England they recognize this. “At 4:30 in the afternoon the company breaks for tea. After I’ve had my tea, I can usually do a scene or two more. I might even be able to die convincingly with tea inside me.” “Petrified Forest” is the stirring drama of a man who has lost his soul but wins it back by giving his life heroically for love. Howard and Bette Davis have the stellar roles. Others in the cast include Genevieve Tobin, Humphrey Bogart, Charles Grapewin, Dick Foran, Porter Hall and Joseph Sawyer. The sereenplay by Charles Kenyon and Delmer Daves, is based on the play by Robert Emmet Sherwood. Humphrey Bogart Afraid To Meet Himself In Dark Make-up Of Killer In “Petrified Forest’ So Terrifying He Daren’t Say “Boo” If Humphrey Bogart says ‘‘boo’’ in publie all the women in the neighborhood take to their heels. This has been going on for a year now and the young actor is used to it. As Duke Mantee, the steely voiced killer in ‘‘The Petrified Forest,’’ first in New York during the long stage run of the play and later for seven weeks during the filming of the picture which comes to the 0.0... EWGAtrG Ones. =. at et » Bogart has worn a_ self-grown sect of black whiskers and a hideous short haircut. With these he manages to look just as tough as Robert Sherwood intended the ‘‘Duke’’ should look when he wrote the play. No amount of careful grooming and neither hats, caps nor mufflers can hide the menace of that black stubble beard and the shaved temples. His is a makeup that just automatically frightens women and children half to death when they come face to face with it unexpectedly. And if he should go ‘“boo’’ at them, as he is sometimes tempted to do, the police riot squad would be summoned in a hurry. “*T get a shock out of it myself, sometimes,’’ Bogart confesses. As a matter of fact Bogart avoided dark streets and alleys while he worked in this character. He felt that someone might take a pot shot at him mistaking him for a suspicious person if he once got off the main traveled sidewalks and highways. Bogart has not always played menacing roles. In fact the Duke Mantee part was his first. Bogart was considered something of a young ‘‘ smoothie’’ by producers and he was generally cast as the juvenile who could make love convineingly. He weleomed the chance to play a ‘‘killer’’ role in this play beeause he hoped it would prove that he could handle a characterization and that he need not always be cast as ‘‘himself.?? There is no longer any doubt of this in the minds of the audiences who have seen him in ‘‘ The Petrified Forest.’’ He is beginning to wonder now if he may not be committed to a long life of wearing whiskers and bad haircuts. He doesn’t care much if he can have such rich chances as he has in this particular play and picture. ‘‘The Petrified Forest’’ is the stirring drama of a man who has lost his soul but wins it back by giving his life heroically for love. Leslie Howard and Bette Davis have the stellar roles. Others in in the cast include Genevieve Tobin, Bogart, Charley Grapewin, Dick Foran, Porter Hall and Joseph Sawyer. The picture was directed by Archie L. Mayo. Lost A Million Charley Grapewin, noted stage star, playwright and songwriter, lost a million dollars in 1929 and turned to the screen for a livelihood. He made good, and now has the most important film role of his career with Leslie Howard and Bette Davis in ‘‘The Petrified BMorest??-at) thé 2 Theatre. Mat No. 104—10c Famous Author Took Last Words From Actor’s Song ~ — When O. Henry, America’s greatest teller of short stories, lay dying in the Polyclinic Hospital, then on East 34th Street in New York City, which he had christened “Bagdad-on-the-Subway,” he turned to his nurse, just before dawn and whispered: “Take my hand — and turn up the light”! The attendant did as he requested, and to calm him, asked “why.” The great author of “The Four Million,” with his gift for finding the tragic in the ribald, smiled sadly and murmured the words of the most popular song of the day: “Ym afraid to go home in the dark.” These were the last words of the man whose works may never die. They were written by Charley Grapewin, himself a famous playwright as well as actor, who has an important role with Leslie Howard and Bette Davis in the Warner Bros. drama “The Petrified Forest” which opens at the pois teat iaics Theatre On «....2..5.c-cse00 Charley Grapewin was born in Xenia, Ohio, on December 20th, 1875. After he was graduated from the Wellington, Ohio high school — he began his successful career. Not content to interpret character — he began to write plays and songs. He was author and composer of “The Awakening of Mr. Pipp” in which he starred, as well as others. His song “I’m Afraid to Go Home in the Dark” became immensely popular. Especial interest attaches to the gay ballad because of its tragie association with O. Henry. Charley Grapewin was an intimate friend of Will Rogers, and supported him in “Judge Priest.” One of his most amusingly human characterizations is given in the role of “Gramp”—the childish father of the keeper of the desert garage in “The Petrified Forest.” He has always taken chances but the best one he ever did take, he says, was on his wedding day, when he became the proud husband of the belle of Wellington, Ohio—Anna Chance. ae