White Banners (Warner Bros.) (1938)

eeee PUBLICITY (Advance) Film Men Find Snow Makes Best Snowballs Artificial snow looks very pretty in a motion picture, but unfortunately you can’t roll it into a snowball. As a consequence, when Director Edmund Goulding called for a snowball fight between rival groups of youngsters in the Warner Bros.-Cosmopolitan production of Lloyd C. Douglas’ best-selling novel, “White Banners,” coming to the Strand Theatre, the property department hurriedly began experimenting with cotton and other things in an effort to develop a throwable snowball. The cotton was too light, however, and shredded asbestos was too heavy and might have caused damage during the fight. Other materials were even less satisfactory. So, finally, the property men jumped into a truck and drove the 100-odd miles to Arrowhead Springs, a mountain resort, where real snow covered the ground. There they filled about sixty old-fashioned galvanized iron wash tubs with the real snow from the mountainsides. So the youngsters, when the scene was finally filmed, threw real snowballs. The moral of this story, if any, is that nothing makes a better snowball than snow. Rains an Inventor In Newest Film Automatic refrigerators today are nearly as common as automobiles. They pour from the various manufacturing plants by the millions. Nevertheless, the Warner Bros. studio had to import two °* refrigeration experts from the Electrolux company’s plant in the middle west to build a refrigerator for their Cosmopolitan production of Lloyd C. Douglas’ novel, “White Banners,” coming Friday to the Strand Theatre. The engineers brought with them blue-prints of several of the first practical automatic refrigerators, or “iceless iceboxes,” ever built. From these they built serviceable reproductions, with compressors and refrigeration coils in separate units. The entire story of “White Banners” revolves around the invention of the automatic refrigerator and, subsequently, the development of the gas refrigerator by a character named Paul Ward. In the picture Ward is portrayed by Claude Rains, and for a whole week the character actor, guided by the expert hands of the two engineers, reenacted the invention of the automatic refrigerator. Also featured in “White Banners,” are Fay Bainter, Bonita Granville and Jackie Cooper. Edmund Goulding directed. Mat 205—30c THREE ON A WISH — Kay Johnson, Bonita Granville and Claude Rains are strictly concerned with family matters in this scene from "White Banners,'' the film version of the Lloyd C. Douglas novel, coming to the Strand. (Advance) Lloyd C. Douglas Is Delighted With Film Version Of His Book A trifle perturbed when they heard that a “distinguished visitor” was coming to their set and might require a “dress parade” reception, members of the company which filmed ‘White Banners,” the Warner Bros.Cosmopolitan production opening next Friday at the Strand Theatre, lost their feeling of annoyance completely when the doors of the sound stage opened to admit a robust, sparselyhaired, 190-pounder with twinkling eyes and a shy expression. “Why, it’s Lloyd C. Douglas,” one member of the cast passed the word along to’ another. Everyone looked relieved. For Dr. Lloyd C. Douglas, who wrote “White Banners,” and whose record as an author thoroughly entitled him to the fidgety attention that the film company’s first admonitory whispers had suggested, totally lacks the disposition to act like a “big shot.” “White Banners” is Dr. Douglas’ third best seller to be converted into a hit motion picture (the two preceding ones being “Magnificent Obsession” and “Green Light’) but it was only Dr. Douglas’ fifth, or perhaps his sixth, visit to a motion picture studio. “T don’t know whether they like to have me around,” he whispered hesitantly. Fay Bainter, who plays Hannah Parmalee in the film, quickly put the author at his ease. She came forward to be introduced, reached into her bag, and brought out a copy of “White Banners” in book form. “T’ve read it several times,” she said. ; The author, who had been a clergyman thirty-two years before he became one of America’s best known novelists, beamed. Then Miss Bainter asked Dr. Douglas to autograph her book. He beamed more widely. Introduced next to Claude Rains, who plays the principal role of Paul Ward, and then to Edmund Goulding, the director, Dr. Douglas looked abashed when the latter asked him if he would agree to direct one of the scenes from his own book. Before the author knew it, he was wiping his spectacles and bending his heavy frame to peer through the camera. After the short scene was finished, Dr. Douglas thanked the players. “I feel very happy at the way this studio has treated my book,” Dr. Douglas confided as he left the brightly lighted semicircle in front of the camera, and began a tour of inspection of the rest of the sound stage, which had been converted into a snow-covered small-town street. “You know, the town itself is remarkable,” he said, pausing to peer carefully through a bay window into the cheerfully lighted interior of a middle class home. “T didn’t go into great detail about Middale in my physical description of the midwest town in my book; yet here it all is, before me. Everything is as I imagined it. Somebody must have read my mind.” Dr. Douglas was_ taken through the “Ward home,” which was a fully built house, both ground and second floors, and with five rooms of furnishings of the sort in vogue a generation back. Electric lights of an outdated shape gave illumination. Outdoors, the flickering street lights were of gas. “It is an amazing job,” he said. “Like the acting of Miss Bainter, Mr. Rains and the others, it has captured the exact spirit of my book. I am one writer who is more than pleased with the care the movies have taken of my book and my characters. I could not improve on them. “Perhaps,” he twinkled an instant later, “they have made some improvements on me.” [5] (Advance) Infant Needs No Direction For Her Scene Ten-months-old babies _ ordinarily don’t take instructions from a motion picture director. But Barbara Beaton, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. William J. Beaton of Beverly Hills, appears to be an exception. One day on the set of the Warner Bros.-Cosmopolitan production of the Lloyd C. Douglas novel, “White Banners,” which opens next Friday at the Strand Theatre, the company was preparing to shoot a scene wherein little Barbara, who is cast as the child of Claude Rains and Kay Johnson, was supposed to reach out from her high chair and pull a large quantity of her father’s glass chemical equipment off the drain board of the kitchen sink. Property men, assuming that it would be quite impossible to get the child to take Edmund Goulding’s direction, set up an elaborate system of invisible wires with which to topple the glass tubes, jars and other equipment off the sink. The camera had _= scarcely started to roll and the prop men weren’t even in position when little Barbara nonchalantly reached out, grabbed the pretty glass do-dads and yanked them off the sink for a perfect scene. “IT wish all actors and actresses took direction as well as you,” Goulding remarked to the excited infant, who gurgled her wordless thanks. Boy Actor Nixes Romantic Roles Jackie Cooper has been an actor in motion pictures for eleven of his fifteen years, but he has no desire to become a romantic star of the screen. Young Mr. Cooper, whose latest picture, the Warner Bros.Cosmopolitan production, “White Banners,” based on the Lloyd C. Douglas novel of that name, is coming Friday to the Strand Theatre, prefers rather to become an outstanding character actor. His explanation of his rather unusual ambition is simple. “During my years in pictures,” he says, “I’ve seen too many ‘kid stars’ grow up determined to become leading men or leading women. Unfortunately, they didn’t have the looks. They were all swell actors, but they didn’t have what it takes to become a romantic star. So, they’re forgotten now. “That isn’t going to happen to me. I know I’m no Valentino or Taylor, so when I grow up it’ll be character parts for me.” Meanwhile, Jackie is prepared, if necessary, to fill in the interval between juvenile and character roles by turning to the technical end of motion pictures. “White Banners’ includes in its cast, besides young Cooper, Fay Bainter, Claude Rains and Bonita Granville.