FILM NOTES

Grey River Argus, 10 December 1938, Page 10

FILM NOTES

-Virginia Shies at Film Stunt. Virginia Bruce, ordinarily one of the most gracious and complacent of motion picture stars, staged a onewoman strike that lasted several minutes while shooting one of the sequences in “There Goes My Heart,” the new Hal Roach comedy romance in which she shares stellar honours with Fredric March. The scene called for her to lean out of a second storey window and plug in her electric coffee percolator to a flashing sign about three feet beyond the sill. “I can’t do it,” she declared. “I won’t. I’m afraid.” Attempts to persuade her to go through with the episode revealed that Virginia is a victim of acrophobia—dread of high places. “I’ve never bfeen able to climb mountains, and even looking at the view from friends’ penthouse apartments sends shivers through me,” she confessed. Director Norman Z. McLeod proposed a compromise. If he and Alan Mowbray were to hold her ankles on the inside and a firemen’s net were spread about 10 feet from the ground, would she do it? She agreed—and production continued.

“There Goes My Heart.” Foi’ the first time in film history, a "scene was shot on a studio sound stage, with one of the participants ten miles away. The film was Hal Roach’s “There Goes My Heart,” and the scene shows a subway car with Fredric March, Virginia Bruce and Patsy Kelly conversing with Alan Mowbray, who plays the motorman. But Mowbray was home convalescing from an illness. So, in the emergency, portable sound equipment was transported to his bedside and his voice was piped into the studio set where March, Virginia Bruce and Patsy Kelly directed their lines towards "the empty cab where he was supposed to be. Another Song by Gene Autry. Gene Autry, Action Pictures popular singing cowboy star, has written a new song hit, a waltz entitled “You’re the Only Star in My Blue Heaven.” The number is currently the rage in America, states “Variety,” and looks like equalling in popularity Gene’s other hit, “That Silver Haired Daddy of Mine,” which sold over a million copies. Gene’s next picture is “In Old Santa Fe,” due for local release at Christmas.

“Great Guy.” Janes Cagney is the only actor in Hollywood who possesses a copy of every film in which he has appeared. ■ Jimmy makes a habit of collecting j these trophies of his screen work, and will shortly add another to his collection when he completes “Great Guy,” his forthcoming Action Pictures release. In direct contrast to his screen character (usually a rather “tough individual), he is modest and unassuming in private life, and has even been ! known to blush. He says quite frankI ly that Ke cannot stand the sight of a cut finger, and simply could not watch a man die. In “Great Guy” he has a part similar to his success in “G-Men” —that of an official of the weights i and measures department, who disI covers that racketeers have invaded . his territory. I Cary Grant and Victor McLaglen Save Movie Stunt Men. I Three motion picture stunt men , were saved from possible death by Cary Grant and Victor McLaglen recently, when an automobile driven by John Alban, formei- double for John Barrymore, rolled over a rocky embankment near Lone Pine, California, and plunged into a mountain creek eight feet deep. Alban, with two companions, was returning from Lone Pine to the mountain location where RKO-Radio is filming “Gunga Din.” Grant and McLaglen were following them in a second car. Blinded by the lights of an approaching car, Alban drove his machine too far to the right. The wheels missed the edge of the narrow dirt road, and the car rolled fifteen feet down the rocky slope into the waters of the creek. Grant and McLaglen leaped from their car, scrambled down the bank, ripped the door of the submerged car open, and helped the dazed men to safety. None of-the three was hurt beyond a few bruises and a thorough soaking.

Film Star's Dog Steals Steak Intended for Picture Scene. Punky, Henry Fonda’s dog, has had its first and last visit to a motion picture set, as a result of eating a threeinch porterhouse steak needed for the RKO-Radio picture “The Mad Miss Manton.” The steak, used as a “prop” in one of the comedy sequences in the film, was broiled especially for the scene by the chef at the studio cafe. It is served to Fonda as he lies in a hospital bed, pretending to be close to death from a gunman’s bullets. When Barbara Stanwyck arrives on the scene for a “last farewell,” the steak is hastily shoved under the bed. Everything went according to schedule until the property man reached under the bed to get the steak for a close-up. There was no steak. A search of the set failed to reveal the missing porterhouse, and it was not until Fonda went to his dressing-room and found Punky carefully polishing a large bone that the mystery was solved.

Star Re-lives Real Life Experience In Picture. When Olivia de Havilland was assigned the rolb of Marcia West, lovestruck young girl who falls for mat-inee-idol Basil' Underwood (Leslie Howard) in Warner Bros. “It’s Love I’m After,” something happened that happens very rarely in pictures—a star had been cast in a role which she had really experienced in her own life. For when Olivia was fifteen years old, Leslie Howard was playing “Berkeley Square” on the New York stage. And Olivia, like all the girls ' from six to sixty and over, who had ever seen and heard of Leslie Howard, was just swooning away with the desire to see the secret hero of her heart.

Being a girl of determination and persistence, she started a “let-Olivia-go-to-New-York” campaign that threatened to put her family on the road to a collective nervous breakdown. And if Fate in the form of a couple of trillion microbes hadn’t intervened, there’s no telling what the outcome might have been. The final argument took place in the de Havilland parlour. “But what,” inquired, despairing' kinsfolk, “has New York got that California hasn’t?”

“Leslie Howard,” Olivia murmured dreamily. To no avail it was pointed out that she, Olivia, was only fifteen years old, at which age young ladies did well to concentrate on learning the homely virtues and doing their schoolwork. “And look,” was the clinching persuader, "Christmas is coming, and we are going to give you something you really want. You wouldn’t want to be in New York at Christmas and miss that, would you? Wouldn’t you like to be home here and get your gift? And, by the way, what is it you’d like to have most?” “Go to New York,” answered Olivia) without the flicker of an eyelash. There was a collective gasp and sigh. But Olivia’s mother rose heroically to* an occasion requiring heroic measures. Sidling from the room, she got to a telephone and rang up the family physician, imploring him to arrive post haste. Something, she added, was decidedly wrong with Olivia. There was a whispered consultation when the medico arrived, and he consented to bluff Olivia into a feeling she was ill. Ten minutes later the future screen star found herself in, bed, a thermometer in her mouth, and ice packs to hand. The next day she came down with the mumps! But peace reigned in the de Havilland household. From Valentino's Diary. Just how little time and thoughts change is shown by an extract from the diary of Rudolph Valentino, immortal screen star who died twelve years ago, and whose last film “Son of the Sheik” is currently being revived throughout New Zealand by Action Pictures. To “Son of the Sheik” has been added a full sound synchronisation, making it a new modern entertainment. Valentino wrote fifteen years ago:— “It has become customary in these modern days to laugh, or to pretend to laugh, at all of the old traditions. The ‘Young Intellectuals’ poke scoffing fingers at the old home; at each and every one of the ancient institutions; at motherhood; the gods of our fathers; tender ties; gently-held associations. All of those things have gone out with hoop skirts and golden oak furniture. The two precedinggenerations have become targets for the scepticism and mockery of this generation of iconoclasts.

“Wei, it may be all ‘hokum’; there may he ‘nothing to it’; and I may be only' a ‘victim’ of past scenes and memories. But I know that a lump rose in my throat and a film crossed my eyes as I pointed out to my aunt the square, flat-roofed farmhouse built of heavy white stone—the house where I was born. I was even guilty of showing her the shuttered windows of the very room wherein that epochal event had miraculously taken place! “I can laugh at it, but the laughter is not altogether free of a softer sentiment. And I am not ashamed of it. He who cannot be stirred is in process of dying, emotionally, if no other way.” Oranges Tied to Trees. Filming of RKO-Radio’s “Fugitives For a Night” was delayed nearly two hours one night while a frantic prop man rounded up 22 boxes of oranges —at 11.30 p.m.—and tied their contents to the trees of a San Fernando grove. It was almost midnight when the company arrived at the location site for scenes in which Frank Albertson and Eleanor Lynn raid an orange grove—only' to find that due to a misunderstanding, the entire orchard had been carefully picked the day before. After a whirlwind trip to town, where he bought out the entire stocks of two startled orange dealers, the prop man returned to the fruitless grove, set the entire company to tieing the contents of 22 orange boxes to the trees.

Swishi'ng Silk Gown Proves Problem. Swishing silk which came into the microphone like machine gun fire recently disrupted scenes for RKO-Ra-dio’s “Smashing the Rackets,” in which Chestei’ Morris, Bruce Cabot, and Frances Mercer have the top spots. The silk was in a gown worn by Miss Mercer, and as she walked about the set, the rustle of the silk was picked up hy the “mike” and exaggerated to a point where it drowned out the dialogue. Sound technicians and Edward Stevenson, studio costume designer, solved the problem by lining the silk skirt with soft satin and shortening it enough so it just cleared the floor. Editor's Ten Favourite Pictures. Asked by the New York “Sun” to list his “Ten Favourite Pictures,” Terry Ramsaye, editor’ of the Motion Picture Herald, who has been associated with the industry for twenty-five years, and is the author of a twovolume history of the motion picture “A Million and One Nights,” named the following ten films, of which five were United Artists releases: “Hurricane,” “Henry VIII,” “The House of Rothschild,” “Cavalcade,” “Les Miserables,” .'"The 39 Steps,” "A Star is Born,” “The Informer,” “The Good Earth,” “Un Carnet du Bal.”

“Burmese Silver.” Michael Powell, who will direct Alexander Korda’s technicolour film “Burmese Silver,” starring Sabu, has returned to Denham Studios from a flying trip to Burma, where he photographed backgrounds for the production, and arranged for exterior locations and camping accommodations for the company that is to go to Burma shortly. He brought back to London thirty crates of props to be used for matching shots in studio scenes. “Burmese Silver” is based on the novel by Edward Thompson, with the screenplay written by Sir Robert Vansittart, chief diplomatic advisor to His Majesty’s Government.