It's Really Quite Easy

Dominion, Volume 30, Issue 42, 13 November 1936, Page 14

It's Really Quite Easy

TT’S easy when you know how. After the first showing of “My Man Godfrey,” a friend said to Charles R. Rogers, vice-president in charge of production for the new Universal picture company, “That’s a fine picture. How do you go about planning a success like that?”

Rogers is a magnanimous soul and so he bared his secret. “This is the method,” he said. “First buy the screen rights of a surefire, laugh-get-ting novel like Eric Hatch’s book, ‘My Man Godfrey.’ Then invite the author out to Hollywood to write the screen play. “Get somebody to collaborate with him. A man like Morrie .Ryskind, who wrote the stage hit, ‘Of Thee I Sing,’ and dozens of screen successes, among them ‘A Night at the Opera.’ “After they complete the script, cast a couple of stars like William Powell and Carole Lombard in the leading roles. Then assign an ace director like Gregory La Cava to make the picture. Provide a supporting cast that includes Alice Brady, Gail Patrick, Jean Dixon,.

Eugene Pallette. Alan Mowbray, Mischa Auer, Robert Light and Franklin Pangborn. “Give Carole Lombard a score of new fashions, gowns created by Travis Banton. Get everybody connected with the picture in an enthusiastic, happy-go-lucky mood. Keep them laughing, on and off the set. The madder and merrier, the better.

“Start shooting the picture. Tell all the technicians to give it the works. Add a little music and a little love, pepper it with comedy and serve with plenty of zip—and there you are!”

A PRODUCTION crew of more than 200 actors and film workers, augmented by many hundred Navajo and Zuni Indians, were required to make Paramount’s “The Texas Ranger,” an epic of the early days of this famous American State. The company was on location in the desert stretches of Texas and New Mexico for more than two months, filming dramatic outdoor sequences of the picture.