THE CINEMA WORLD

Northern Advocate, 16 December 1939, Page 14

THE CINEMA WORLD

Lola Lane in “Torchy Blane In Panama”

. Even a United States Army engineer would be hard put to decide where the real Panama Canal merges with

the studio-created one in the Warner Bros, picture, “Torchy Blane in Panama.” The reason, of course, is that the studio went to extravagant lengths to

duplicate the Canal, the Gatun locks

;■ and lake for those shots which had to -. be taken at the studio rather than on the Panama location. No effort to ob-

tain accuracy in every detail was spared, for the very good reason that /the Canal is known to so many ■ Americans who annually visit it on tour. Chances of fault-finding simply could not be taken. , N]ot alone, however, were Canal settings duplicated. Streets, stores and • dwellings in the native quarters of Colon and Panama were required as settings., in some cases, the “Torchy” • company on location in Panama with Lola Lane, Paul Kelly, . Anthony

Averill, Tom Kennedy and Betty Compson could make use of the actual scenes and surroundings. But for other sequences, settings had to be duplicated on the studio lot. One touch, in particular, appealed to Lola Lane. When in Panama, sightseeing one day with an eye out to find the odd and unusual, Miss Lane spotted a ■ watering trough in the side of an adboe dwelling. -.>■ -“That,” she said, “would be somethirfg to tumble into when I’m standing on a second storey ledge and trying to, overhear what the plotters inside the house are saying.” • So it was agreed. And written into

iKe; r , script, too. Miss Lane, playing Torchy Blane, the adventurous girl reporter who pursues a bank bandit to Panama in the hope of unmasking him and getting a scoop for her New York paper, was to take such a fall as?she envisioned. lo, when she got back to -Hollywood, there stood the house and ,thej'vi;atering trough. So there was nothing for her to do except to tumble into ‘ at.