FICTION BECOMES FACT

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XXVI, Issue 147, 6 June 1936, Page 14

FICTION BECOMES FACT

Screen drama and real life drama came closely tied together for Joan Bennett whilst she was playing opposite Fred Mac Murray in “Thirteen Hours by Air,” Paramount’s aviation drama. While Joan was in the midst of production on the picture, word was received that her famous father, Richard Bennett had been fakeu seriously ill in New York. Like lightning, she was whisked from the “Thirteen Hours by Air” story into one of stark reality. But the setting was the same. The cabin of the ’plane which speeded her and her sister, Constance, to her father's bedside, was of similar make and design to the machine used by the Studios in the making of the film. Almost alike, too, were the circumstances of her real-life flight and that in the picture—an emergency that made it necessary for her to get across the continent as quickly as possible. Fortunately, however, Mr Bennett came through the critical period and Joan was able to fly back to Hollywood within a few days to resume her work in “Thirteen Hours by Air.”

The proverbial fly in the ointment is small pumpkins as a trouble maker com pared with the fly in the film close-up. William Powell and Jean Arthur weie finishing a lengthy and difficult scene of RKO Radio’s "The Ex-Mrs Bradford” in impressive fashion when a frolicsome fly made a three-point lard ing on the tip of Powell’s nose. Powell heroically curbed the impulse to swat and completed his lines, but the scent wag ruined, 1