Robert Taylor Has Leading Role

Northern Advocate, 18 March 1939, Page 3 (Supplement)

Robert Taylor Has Leading Role

They shot Robert Young, but he was such a tough hombre that it took sixteen shots to do it.

Witnesses to the “assassination” included Robert Taylor, Margaret Sullavan, Franchot Tone, the postmastergeneral of Japan, the head of Canada’s largest film firm, an Episcopalian bishop and two hundred other bystanders.

The dramatic scene was filmed in the village erected for “Three Comrades,” screen version of the noted Erich Maria Remarque, novel. The ■ distinguished eye-witnesses, besides Taylor, Miss Sullavan and Tone, were visitors on the set at the time.

In the story of early post-war days in Europe, Taylor, Tone 1 and Young are three young war veterans who cling together in their struggle to rehabilitate themselves in a troubled world. Taylor is the romantic comrade who falls in love with Miss Sullavan. Tone is the hardened realist whose only passion is for his racing automobile, and Young is the young idealist opposing radical elements seeking to undermine his country.

Prior to his assassination Young, Henry Hull, a patriotic editor, and their small group of followers have barricaded themselves in an old warehouse against the attack of a mob. Taylor and Tone are returning from the railway station where they put Miss Sullavan, ailing in health, on a train bound ifor a sanitorium. As they reach the village square, the warehouse door opens and Young emerges, leading twenty defenders into the face of the attackers.

Taylor yells at him: “Gottfried! Go back!”

“I knew he’d come out in front,” i says Tone, calmly. The scene was completed, and Director Frank Borzage prepared for the death of Young. Cameraman Karl iFreund aimed his cameras down a long winding alley. The “grips” turned hose on the cobbled pavement and the building walls and the alley became flecked with puddles. Borzage invited the four players— Taylor, Tone, Young and Hull—to sit in front of, the cameras and study the action he wanted. He told qjl the participants what to do. Men ran madly down the street, turned frightened faces back to the camera. Three times, Borzage put the players through their paces. He next called for rehearsals by the principals.

The director sent the first group scampering down the alley. Young and Hull, followed. running rapidly. Seventy-five feet from the camera, Hal Sausser, the property man, fired a blank cartridge behind the cameras.

Young’s arms thrashed the air and he fell face down in the mud puddle. Hull ran a few feet farther, stopped, and looked back, puzzled. Taylor and Tone ran into the scene and cradled Young in their arms. “That’s as far as we’ll go on the long shot,” Borzage advised. He called for a “take.” Thrice, the scene was filmed and then the sound engineers conferred with Borzage and Freund. The blank shot was too loud for the sound track. The players rehearsed again without a shot. Young’s fall was perfectly timed without the shot, and there were the scenes that were okayed, the sound of the shot to be “dubbed” in the sound track later.

Before the day had ended, Taylor estimated he had done more running through the damp alley than he had done in the track meet sequences in “A Yank at Oxford,” while in long shots and close-ups Young had flopped into the mud sixteen times.