ENDING IN FLAMES

Press, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22418, 3 June 1938, Page 5

ENDING IN FLAMES

“In Old Chicago,” a story of American life in the younger days of the famous city, begins at the Mayfair to-day. The story, with the famous -fire as its climax, has Tyrone Power. Alice Faye, and Don Ameche in the leading roles. The fire itself, the mere matter of reproducing convincingly a fire that burned four square miles of buildings, destroyed 200,000,000 dollars’ worth of property, killed 300 people (that was the number of dead who'were found after the conflagration), all in a holocaust that lasted unabated for two days was difficult enough. A 60-acre city had to be destroyed by reali flames, carefully controlled, while cameramen, Tyrone Power, Alice Faye, Don Ameche, Alice Brady, and hordes of extras and cattle all performed their duties in the midst of the flames. In' a strange 'reversal, chaos had to be made out of disciplined order. Technical ingenuity was taxed to the uttermost to make the screen fire conform with eye witnesses’ descriptions of the fire which mentioned huge clouds of gas bursting into flame hundreds of feet above the main blaze, iron girders melted and running like water, a river ablaze with, burning oil on its surface, the constant deepening roar of flames fanned by the gale, and above all the panic of hordes of terrified refugees. Bringing this. on the screen meant reconstructing two Chicagos, one the city in 1854, just after the start of its growth, the other the city in its glory just before the blazing ruin descended. A vast amount of research was entailed in this job. The Twentieth Century-Fox studio staff prepared—taking a year to do it —a 240-page book dealing minutely not only with such obvious matters as the plans of the city, the important buildings, the costumes of the day, the industries,' the manners of the period, but also with such apparently irrelevant details as what the people ate, drank, read, what games they played, what songs they

Romantic Days Recalled by “In Old Chicago”

sang, the conditions of the streets, how they were lighted, how the police and fire departments were managed, and how elections were conducted.