Yes, My Darling Daughter (Warner Bros.) (1939)

Advance at 208— ADVICE FROM AN AUNT who's been through the marriage mill once or twice herself seems to be in store for daughter. Scene from Warner Bros. comedy ‘Yes, My Darling Daughter" includes (left to right) Genevieve Tobin, Roland Young, Priscilla Lane, and Fay Bainter at Strand Friday. ‘Yes, My Darling Daughter’ Goes From Stage to Screen It’s no compliment to a motion picture to say that it is “almost exactly like the stage play’— a comment frequently . heard when a footlight success appears on the screen. The tremendous difference between a stage and film presentation of the same plot is easily discovered by a process of comparison. Take as an example “Yes, My Darling Daughter,” Mark Reed’s hit play, just produced by Warner Bros. with Priscilla Lane and Jeffrey Lynn as romantic leads, which opens next Friday at the Strand Theatre. Plot, characterizations and atmosphere of the play have been so well preserved by Director William Keighley that the film version is certain to bring forth plenty of those “exactly like the play” comments. Facts, however, reveal differences in nearly every angle of production—differences which tend to make the picture move faster and be more colorful and interesting than the play. In the stage play presentation, only one set was used. In the picture thirty-four major sets alone are seen, with many other “angle” shots, road shots and so on. Yet as ascreen play, “Yes, My Darling Daughter’ is not remarkable for number of sets. It lends itself to simplicity in this regard—but not such a stern simplicity as stage limitations enforced. For example, it is highly effective in the picture to show the young couple who have eloped to the mountains to be alone. And to see the excited parents and others who rush about trying to stop them being caught by police (thanks to the intervention of Granny May Robson) and put into jail. It’s also dramatically effective as well as valuable for variety and a sense of motion to have a love scene on another lake; to have the girl’s family see the hero off on an ocean liner, and to have the girl, armed with a marriage license, waiting for the hero in his cabin when he reaches it. Such points are covered by dialogue in the play. The actor comes in and tells what has happened to him. In the picture it can be seen happening. And some things are hard to tell in dialogue. So much for sets. Thrilling road shots from a speeding train and automobile and_ beautiful outdoor scenery form a more obvious contrast between play and film. For a more subtle one, consider the spectator’s point of view, which in the play must be the seat he occupies in the theatre. In the film it is the camera’s viewpoint. This changes every time the camera is moved closer or farther away from the action, or at a new angle to it. And occasionally the camera is moved about during a single scene, allowing a shot to be followed. In “Yes, My Darling Daughter” the final cutting script shows 563 separate points of view from which the action was _ photographed. The effect of this is not only the obvious one of lending variety and a sense of motion; more important to entertainment value is the illusion it creates. This illusion is that the spectator is walking around among the story characters, is in a way one of them. This is such a lifelike impression that it contributes powerfully to the realism of a motion picture. TURNS ON TEARS AT DIRECTOR'S NOD A crying contest on a film set may have determined two things: young less-experienced dramatic actresses start weeping slower, and can’t stop so soon—but veteran dramatic actresses cry more while they’re about it. In the contest at the Warner Bros. Studio during the filming of a scene for “Yes, My Darling Daughter,” the comedy opening at the Strand Theatre next Friday, were Priscilla Lane and Fay Bainter. Neither belongs to the class of actress who has to have menthol blown into the eyes. Just a nod from the director is all they need. Miss Lane took one minute, fifteen seconds by the script girl’s stop-watch before she wept enough to start the tears rolling down her cheeks. Miss Bainter had to start dryeyed and cry as soon as possible after the scene had started. It took her twenty-two seconds. She stopped almost immediately after the scene was over, but while she was at it tears streamed from her eyes. Miss Lane, on the other hand, couldn’t stop for nearly five minutes. Publicity Prefers H1s Present Roles To Days As Matinee Idol RISEN 10 TOP BY In the just-passing film cycle which saw villian types cast as heroes, angelic-looking actors as villians, comedians as tragedians, and once-dignified glamour girls as slapstick comediennes, one actor escaped. One, and one only, so far as a casual scanning of casting statistics shows. Ian Hunter appeared in a large number of pictures for Warner Bros. and other studios, but not once was his character reversed during that hectic, topsy-turvy cycle. Always he has been the wholesome, healthy, sporting and benevolent type of hero or assistant hero who loses a heroine toward the end to a scampier type of hero — or wins her, if at all, on the rebound. That, to Hunter’s relief, was the way he was “typed” when he first arrived in Hollywood from England, and so he has remained throughout the odd ‘‘reversing everything” novelty cycle of film casting. It was a relief to him because, on the British stage and screen, he had been a matinee idol. People referred to him as that, and drove him politely furious. He can be very furious and still be polite, like a typical Britisher. Not hypocritically but just sportingly polite. That was one of the character traits the American casting experts caught in him and exploited. His latest film assignment gave him character variation but as usual didn’t take him out of type. It was “Yes, My Darling Daughter,” the Warner Bros. comedy which opens next Friday at the Strand Theatre. In it he plays Fay Bainter’s solidly virtuous banker husband. Fay’s a liberal, Hunter as always, a conservative, but a sporting conservative (as always, too), so that he has a nice whimsical attitude toward his wife’s past, his mother-in-law’s gibes, and at long last his daughter, Priscilla Lane’s running away with Jeffrey Lynn. Mark Reed might have written the part with Hunter in mind when he had the banker talk of punishment, and even take Mat 104 —-15c lan Hunter steps toward it, but in the end be too sporting and touched by his sense of humor and proportion to go through with it. Reed wrote the stage play from which “Yes, My Darling Daughter” was taken. Casey Robinson, who scenarized the picture, and William Keighley, who directed it, didn’t warp the part in any respect to make it fit Hunter. They simply saw the husky, rosey-faced Englishman as the man to play it. Hunter is one actor who hasn’t the slightest complaint about being “typed.” Within his type, he thinks, is ample scope for variation of character-drawing and demonstration of his histrionic versatility. Hunter thinks the reversal cycle is about over, and that it’s a good thing. He isn’t one who holds that comedians should be allowed to indulge in their passion to play Hamlet. There’s a basic fitness of things, he believes. Sacrificed Seat Of Pants for Art Jeffrey Lynn risked his life for his art and lost the seat of his pants. So, every precaution having been taken against any mishap but that one, Director William Keighley called it a day a bit early one day while filming scenes on location for “Yes, My Darling Daughter.” The loss was Lynn’s fault. He has played a lot of baseball, and knows how to slide. This time he slid sitting down, and with so much enthusiasm that the wardrobe man on the set couldn’t repair the damages. Priscilla Lane, who plays romantic lead in the Warner Bros. cinematization of the stage hit, was the one endangering Lynn’s life. In one scene she—because of a lover’s quarrel—drives past him in one direction as he trudges along a country road. When she encounters him again, he’s not to be fooled. He does a sliding leap into the her car, so she has to stop. The road, being of dirt covered with loose pebbles, and the effectiveness of the scene depending on the car coming to a sliding stop within a foot of the sit-downstrike actor, Lynn was taking plenty of chances. Maybe that’s why everybody forgot the possibility of damages to the actor’s trousers. Mat 20/7 — 3Uc GRANDMA COMES THROUGH with some mighty pertinent advice for Priscilla Lane in this scene from the comedy of the year "Yes, My Darling Daughter," coming to the Strand Friday. May Robson is the foxy grandma. [8] FAY BAINTER HAS AVOIDING “TANT Fay Bainter thinks the most difficult part of acting is to know or at least to feel when one is “hamming” and when one is simply putting over a_ scene strongly. “There is a subtle line between the two in some circumstances often found in plots and in doing some characterizations,” Miss Bainter declares. ““When it is not possible to underplay scenes, because of either circumstances or characters involved, then almost any player runs into the danger of overacting — of ‘hamming”’.” ‘*Some people seem to have a divine instinct which protects them — nine times out of ten, at any rate — from committing this histrionic sin. Others, I suspect, have such a thorough grasp of technique that they can underplay even very emotional scenes and yet register effectively in them, thus staying well within the boundary line between being expressive and being ‘hammy’.” “That boundary line makes things more difficult for actors by moving, perhaps just when you think you’ve located it. Years ago stage acting was so broadly played that its best examples would be laughed off the modern screen as being terribly overplayed.” “Academy awards have been won for acting that miraculously stayed just within — but oh, so close!—to the margin.” “In fact, a cycle of underplaying permits someone occasionally to come forward, dare to overpay, and by contrast attract favorable attention rather than horse-laughs.” Miss Bainter, whose most recent screen role is that of the mother in “Yes, My Darling Daughter,” the Warner Bros. comedy opening Friday at the Strand Theatre, has chalked up film hits in such pictures as “Jezebel,” and “White Banners,” scoring against the best acting competition the film industry has to offer. “In these pictures I was able to underplay in most instances, but TI admit I took some tall chances in a few scenes,” she declares. Has Model Lips Priscilla Lane, after finishing screen tests for makeup in “Yes, My Darling Daughter,” spent another two hours the day before her work in the picture began in getting a cast of her lips and chin made. It was sent to Paris where a sculptor was assembling, by parts and degrees, lips here, a nose there, ears elsewhere to make “the perfect feminine head” statuette. Mat 102 — ISc Fay Bainter Just Phone Voice Add to the list of studio odd jobs that of a man who talked over a regular telephone, hooked up through the Warner Bros. Studio exchange, with May Robson on the set of “Yes, My Darling Daughter.” He talked while the scene was going, thus being a “voice in the telephone receiver.” For this purpose they chose—not an actor — but a sound expert.