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12
SCREENLAND
By
Jane Whitney
Those who guide the stars and translate scripts into action are among Hollywood's unsung heroes, rarely commanding the public notice they rightfully deserve. In this series, SCREENLAND tells the true story about the important picture directors.
Mervyn LeRoy
resents being called
Contact with the theatre since he was twelve, has ghen LeRoy a deep-rooted sense of "audience values." At right, Irene Dunne, Director LeRoy, Louis Calhern and Cameraman Polito listen to an old song record between scenes for "Sweet Adeline."
Master of the Hit Formula!
ONE NIGHT, a little over a quarter of a century ago, a youngster, just turned seven, was sleeping the sleep of the very young. Suddenly his boy dreams were disrupted by an unearthly din, a screeching of wooden boards and iron hinges. The world, his world, was tottering. Pandemonium broke loose. It was the beginning of the San Francisco earthquake of 1906.
The air was filled with a deafening crash, a rising clamor of terror-laden voices, and down, down, down went Mervyn LeRoy and his little bed to the trembling earth below. Three whole floors below ! The end of all material things? Not for Mervyn. Not by many amazing experiences yet to come !
Upon finding himself suddenly wide awake, unharmed,
mentally and geographically down to earth, his first fearless thoughts were of his bicycle. The one his father, then owner of a department store, had given him not long before. With the ground doing queer things under his feet, he made straight for the shed where his bicycle stood. An ever-widening glare of light crimsoned the sky. The shed, when he arrived there, was aWaze with flames. Men shouted and danced like demented wraiths in the livid glow. The city was on fire !
Mervyn forgot about his bike. There were other, bigger things to do. He must help put out that fire!
That was twenty-six years ago. Mervyn is now thirty-two, and though he has never_ again been called upon to stamp out the flames of a city on fire, he has been going about in a hectic (Continued on page 70)