Tovarich (Warner Bros.) (1937)

The Crowning Touch In Smart Headgear Introduced by CLAUDETTE COLBERT (Fashion Page Art Feature — 4 cols. wide) What's In A Kiss? Kisses are still important in pictures even though directors give them less printed footage than they did in the good old days. Five or six years ago, kisses averaged a minute apiece on the screen and some ran a good deal longer than that. The days when you could make a complete picture with five kisses, a villain and a chase are gone. A cinema kiss, even the approved type bestowed by a husband on his wife, runs less than half a minute. But just as much care is lavished on kissing. The kisses may not be as lingering when you see them on the screen, but as much raw film was used in making them as of yore. And the preparations for the filming of the meeting of the lips are as elaborate as they used to be. There is a kiss in Warner Bros.’ **Tovarich.”” For that matter, there are several, but the one under discussion is the caress bestowed on Claudette Colbert by Charles Boyer. The kiss has been kept reasonably short, even though Miss Colbert and Mr. Boyer are husband and wife in the picture and have a perfect right to stand on roof tops making love. It runs, at most, half a minute. It took Director Anatole Litvak much more than a minute to get a satisfactory kiss. Miss Colbert and Mr. Boyer kissed each other many times and several thousand feet of film went through the camera before Director Litvak decided he had the ultimate in perfection. To begin with, he had a special setting built on top of a thirty foot scaffold. The setting was the edge of a Paris roof top and behind it the crooked chimney pots and roof tops of the city were visible. Below you caught a glimpse of a square with a lot of people dancing in it. Because Director Litvak wanted the camera to move down on the two stars so that the lens would look over their heads at the street below, he had a camera track built. It led upward from the edge of the roof at a.45 degree angle. Steel cables were fastened to the camera dolly. Ten men were on the other ends of the cables, pulling the camera up or lowering it toward Miss Colbert and Mr. Boyer at a signal from Director Litvak. Around the camera was a platform and on the platform were Cinematographer Charles Lang and his assistants. There were microphone booms and lights and gadgets furnished by Byron Haskins of the special effects department, until the whole thing resembled a Ruse Uoidserg cartoon. When you see the finished product on the screen, next week at the Strand Theatre, you'll get the impression that Miss Colbert and Mr. Boyer were alone on that roof top. They weren't. The place was cluttered with people, all of whom had a good reason for being there. The two stars didn’t object. They are not at all diffident about their kisses and do not demand closed sets for their love scenes. It is exaggerating a little to say that the scene only involved a kiss. Miss Colbert had three lines of dialogue and Mr. Boyer had two. And she slapped his face lightly before she kissed him. But the kiss was the most important part of it. When, at the end of an eight hour day, Director Litvak moved his company to another set, he admitted that he had filmed something fine in the way of a cinema kiss — something that the fans will remember for a long time as they remember the kiss given long ago to Greta Garbo by the late Jack Gilbert. It took forty “‘takes’’ and a good deal of patience to get a moving picture of Squeegee, a Pekingese carrying a shoe into a room for the Warner Bros. screen version of “‘Tovarich.” It wasn’t that Squeegee was temperamental. It was just that she couldn't understand why she should walk through a door with a shoe in her mouth at a word from Director Anatole Litvak. Casey Robinson, the scenarist, and Director Litvak were responsible for the scene. It wasn’t in the original ‘“‘Tovarich.”” In the stage play, Prince Mikail Ouratieff, a butler for the nonce, carries the shoe in on a tray. Robinson and Litvak toyed with the idea of having Charles Boyer, who plays the Prince, carry the shoe. Then they decided to let Squeegee do it. Squeegee is the property of Rene Renfro, who makes his living renting dogs, cats, mountain lions, chickens, mice, rats, pigeons, geese and swans to motion picture stu Mat 202—30c BEAUTY AND THE “BUTLER” — Claudette Colbert and Charles Boyer co-star in the grandest comedy romance to come out of Hollywood in many a moon — it’s “Tovarich,” based on the round-the-world stage hit. The screen version is the next feature attraction at the Strand. It's A Dog’s Life! Mat 402—60c dios. At a moment’s notice Mr. Renfro can furnish almost any kind of animal except an Aardvaark or a Duck-Billed Platypus. For Squeegee, the smartest Pekingese in Hollywood, he gets $75 a day. The Pekingese is three years old, and her master, Rene Renfro, has her trained to carry anything she can lift. When Director Litvak asked for a dog who could carry a shoe, Renfro thought of Squeegee and brought her to the studio. She could carry a shoe all right, and did, but she refused to wait for her cue. The scene is a difficult one, even for the human actors and actresses —Claudette Colbert, Boyer, Melville Cooper and Isabel Jeans. Cooper, as the banker, is looking for one of his dress shoes. He hears a knock at the door, opens it and finds Miss Colbert and Boyer standing there. Behind them is Squeegee with the shoe in her mouth. Neither Miss Colbert nor Boyer is supposed to know the dog is there. They have come to tell Cooper that they can find neither the dog nor the shoe. Boyer starts to explain, and that is Squeegee’s cue to walk between the two and into the room, holding the shoe in her mouth. Renfro explained the scene to Squeegee, and she seemed to understand. It was rehearsed, and Squeegee did it perfectly. “We'll take it now,” said Litvak, looking happy. But he didn’t look happy after the first take, for Squeegee refused to wait for Boyer to speak. She walked in just as Cooper opened the door. Renfro scolded her, and she hung her head. “She'll do it right this time,”’ Renfro assured the director. ““She’s sorry she spoiled the scene.”’ On the next take, Squeegee waited too long. The whole point of the scene was lost because Squeegee didn’t interrupt Boyer in time. On the next she got tired and refused to come into the room at all —just stood there holding the shoe and looking disgusted. “Maybe it would be better if Miss Colbert or Mr. Boyer walked into the room with the shoe in their mouth,” suggested Cooper. But Director Litvak scowled at him. The scene was finally filmed. On the fortieth take Squeegee timed her entrance right, and the company breathed a sigh of relief. Renfro took Squeegee over in the corner and gave her a biscuit. She turned up her nose at it — then lay down on her pillow and proceeded to go to sleep.