SCREEN and STAGE

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23930, 4 October 1939, Page 11

SCREEN and STAGE

By Harlequin

Hunting the Stars "A wild animal hunter wouldn't hold a candle to a Hollywood autograph hunter." Take Robert Young, for instance. He has been stalked by some of the best autograph hunters in the business, so he has reason for the above statement. Bob thinks that his most unusual experience was supplied by a young lady who dressed as a milkman in order to get into the actor's home and 'get her book signed. He has had the same thing tried by men disguised as milkmen. The funny thin* about this trick is that,the Young family get their milk from a market. "I think Robert Taylor holds the long distance record for autograph chases," says the young Metro-Gold-wyn-Mayer actor. "Taylor got into his car one afternoon to drive to his ranch some 25 • miles away. He observed a boy and girl following closely in another car, but raid no attention to them until he flnaJlv realised they were chasing him. "When he arrived at his ranch, he stopped, got out, and walked over to the car containing the pair to see what they wanted. They took one look, became dumbfounded, turned on the motor and drove away." Taylor may hold the Hollywood record, but William Powell holds the Continental record. On his recent trip abroad, a woman followed him for one week while he was in Vienna. She got the autograph. "A boy built a platform in a tree by the side of Clark Gable's house," adds Bob, "so he could get 'candid shots

of the actor as well as an autograph. Clark finally persuaded him to leave the tree for fear he'd fall and Injure himself. Then Clark posed.in front of his house for the 12-year-old lad.'- ; -A cement-mixing autograph; seeker almost floored Eleanor Powell with his request. He had seen the footprints of the stars; in the forecourt of .the Chinese Theatre in Hollywood. He mixed up a' square of cement, waited outside the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studios for the actress, and then had her make footprints in the wet block! •Then there's the Wallace Beery fan wh6 was told that the actor usually eats lunch at the Vendome restaurant. This girl sat down at one of the tables ordered lunch, ate it. Still no Beery. The place was getting crowded, and , the only way she could keep her place was to keep eating. After two more lunches she gave up and went outside. There was Beery handing out autogrTheS stable boys at the Riviera Country Club will admit that it's not unusual for girls and boys to hire horses for an hour and come back in 10 minutes. Many of these are autograph seekers on the hunt, and they know they can usually find Jeanette MacDonald, Virginia Bruce, Florence Rice and many others cantering along the trails. ■ ~ Like the Northwest Mounties. autoItraph seekers always get their manor woman! " * ' Strand Theatre

Some of California's most startling ■cenery appears a? background in Paramount's latest "Hopalong Cassidy range romance, 'Renegade Trail, which will have its first local showing next Friday at the Strand Theatre. This story of ranchers' efforts to prevent a woman from being blackmailed by her own convict husband was filmed at Lone Pine, California, at the foot of Mount Whitney, highest point in the United States. William Boyd, George Hayes, and Russell Hayden head the cast, playing the daredevil "Cassidy" and his two saddlemates, " Windy. Halliday " and " Lucky Jenkins" respectively. An added attraction is offered in "The King's Men," popular male quartet of stage, screen, and radio, whose members are now cast as Arizona cowboys. "Never Say Die," Paramount's new comedy, which will have its local opening next Friday at the Strand Theatre, stars Martha Raye and Bob Hope in a tale of a hypochondriac who, think-

From ©REEN ROOiM and STUDIO

ing he baj only a month t. live, marries; a "screwball" American girl to do her a favour, and then finds out that he is not doomed after all. Set against the background of "some European Alp," " Never Say Die 'follows the amazing marriage of Hope and Miss Raye from the moment when both seize Upon a wedding as their only means of escape; he, from a muchmarried fortune hunter who is much too expert with a gun, and she from a Russian prince who is out to marry American wealth. The affair is further complicated by the arrival of the nornetown- sweetheart of Miss Raye, played by Andy Devine, who accompanies the couple on their honeymoon in order to keep a watchful eye on the bride! "Naughty Marietta" Though it has previously been shown in Dunedin, the delightful musical film "Naughty Marietta," starring those great favourites. Jeanettti MacDonald and Nelson Eddy, has been found to have so wide an appeal that it is being brought back again, this time to the Regent Theatre on Friday next. Patrons are assured that they will see an entirely new reprint of this universally nopular film, which also embodies the very latest development ) in sound science, giving added freshness and beauty to the voices of the principals. In any film Jeanette MacDonald's appearance is welcome, for she is one of those rare screen personalities who possess beauty as well as exceptional vocal powers, but when she is teamed with the brilliant

baritone. Nelson Eddy; the pipture is doubly attractive. The appeal of " Naughty Marietta" is enhanced by its romantic and adventurous story, enacted in beautiful settings and: well seasoned with humour. Making the most of the musical opportunities which Victor- Herbert has, given her, Miss MacDonald .also reaches a high standard in her character-drawing, and she makes Marietta a person of many attractive moods. Nelson Eddy's study of Captain Warrington, the leader of a troop of mercenaries in French Louisiana, who first rescues Marietta and a number Of other girls after they had been captured by pirates, and then falls in love with her. unaware of her true identity, is a splendid piece of acting. The Whole story is definitely operetta.. When the Princess Marie de la Bonfair, as a protest against marrying Don Carlos de Braganza, an effete Spanish grandee; sweeps out of th<! royal drawing room, changes clothes with'her maid, and ships herself to the colony of Louisiana On a briideship, her tantrums are not to be taken seriously. Her capture by a gang of unshaven pirates brings the debonair baritone into the picture. He is Captain Warrington, the leader of a company of irregular troops, who share with the princess and their captain a passion for song. Warrington, believing " Saucy "Marietta, as she has now become, to be merely a husbandseeking, immigrant girl, treats her with familiarity, but she only pretends to resent it. They sing their way through an eventful courtship, which culminates in a gallant rescue in the face of fearful odds. Excellent comic interludes are provided by Frank Morgan and Elsa Lanchester. Stories Musi Pass Test

The motion picture star and the newspaper reporter have one thing at least in common. They both have to "get their story" if they want to hold thftir jobs. That is.how Douglas Fairbank, jun., feels about it. Fairbanks does not know or care whether the chicksn or the egg came first. He does know that in any picture the story must come first and the star second. He cares so much about, this that he will not act in a picture unless its story can pass a test of five questions based on hi« lifetime film experience as producer, writer and actor. The five queries Fairbanks put to every script he is given to read are these: (1) Does the story offer him a role which allows him to lose his own character in the fiction character? (2) Is it timelv? (3) Is it about normal

folk? (4) Has it a strong central idea? (5) Is there natural situation humour? By winnowing away the chaff through the use of this questionnaire Doug has found such sturdy stories as "The Prisoner of Zenda," "Joy of Living," " The Rage of Paris," " Young In Heart" and " Gunga Din" for his recent screen vehicles. Latest to pass his test is the Universal drama of intrigue and adventure in Britain's African colonies, "The Sun Never Sets." It stars Fairbanks, with Basil Rathbone, Virginia Field, Lionel Atwill. Barbara O'Neil and C. Aubrey Smith featured.

"For years I have been listening to stars complain that they always have to play the same role," said Fairbanks while filming "The Sun Never Sets. "They live in dread of the day when the public will get tired of this set characterisation and they wish they were character actors. That always happens when the star takes first place over the story. I started out that way when I was a kid of 14 in "Stephen Steps Out." The story was just a tailor-made job to present Doug. Fairbanks's son in his debut and it was a terrific flop. So was I. I never got anywhere till I landed in a good story, "Stella Dallas," and another, The Barker," in the talkies. That and my experience as a producer and writer taught me that if you look for stones in which you can forget yourself, the chances are that the public wont want to forget you." The Art of Dying

George E. Stone has died for the hundredth time recently. The diminutive character actor breathed his last in a hospital bed after being

mangled in a stamping machine in "Over the Wall," a melodrama of Sing Sing prison. . ', . . George does not die in hospital beds often. But then again neither is he frequently mangled in stamping machines. He usually dies with a bidlet in his back, which is only natural, playing mean little gangsters most of the time. Machine-gun gullets have sent him into the Great Beyond a few times in pictures of the Great War. Other than these. George's demise has come about in a great variety of ways. He's been in the electric chair three times, been hanged by the neck until dead once or twice He's only been drowned once. The end came three times in motor crashes, twice by stabbings, once by falling down an elevator shaft. There was a thrilling death scene in "Anthony Adverse" by driving a coach and horse off a cliff. Of all of his deaths, George cannot remember one where he just fell ill and died. In fact, George cannot remember having lived through a dramatic film. Ballet and Films The news hound of Film Weekly interviewed Madame Baronova before the close of the Russian Ballet season at Covent Garden last month. He had heard that she had been sent the script of "A Bullet in the Ballet," the successful mystery comedy, written by Simon and Brahma; the book has been prepared for filming at Denham by Michael Balcon. . . ~ ■ Baronova has a surprising attitude to filming, for a dancer. " I should like t 0 try—if it were a serious acting part.' she said. "Things like • Goldwyn Follies' are all right for Zorina—she is a beautiful, glamorous girl. ' It would never do for me with my monkey-face "—a gross self-libel—" and I am afraid of dancing for the screen. " Ballet-films I have seen don t seem able to make the dancing alive, as it is in the flesh. Then all your fast movements come out blurred. Perhaps that is just the photography, for when Sonja Henie spins round they get it. " But you can't film the whole stage, for it comes out so small. And only to have close-ups means nothing, bo new ballets would have to be specially made for the screen." "That is why I'm a little doubtful of doing "A Bullet in the Ballet,' "Baronova concluded, "because I think it would mean more dancing than acting. But if 1 like the script, and if we don't go to Berlin, I may do it." Earlier this year Baronova went to Hollywood to see her friend and compatriot, Akim Tamiroff, and she was then tested by William Dieterle for the part of the dancer in " The Hunchback of Notre Dame." Her test was approved with enthusiasm, and she was told that if the studio got Charles Laughton for the picture, she would be sent for. Laughton is there —but he brought Maureen O'Hara with him for the part.

"The Lambeth Walk" After an absence of nine years. Lupino Lane comes back to the screen in M.G.M.'s British production of " The Lambeth Walk," opening at the Empire Theatre on Friday. It was he who first set the modern world dancing the Cockney number in the London stage show "Me and My Girl." Recently the King and Queen, paying a surprise visit to the Victoria Palace Theatre in London, joined in the audience's chorus, and at the interval were presented to Lane. Last year they danced the "Lambeth Walk" at Balmoral Castle. Incidentally, the song and dance was only introduced into "Me and My Girl" as a fill. It changed what promised to be a flop to a howling success. It swept every strata of English society. America could hardly believe that such an importation really came from the staid English. Australia hummed it from Cooktown to Melbourne, where its strains even invaded the ballroom ■ at Government House. Nazi Germany banned it, or tried to. Heidelburg University students were asked to discard it along with swing music. Lane, since 1930, has combined stage work with picture direction at Elstree. When Sally Gray got the part opposite him in" The Lambeth Walk she set to work seriously to learn Cockney dialect, wandered about incognito watching the behaviour and dress of the local lovelies. It seems that back in 1732 a Londoner named Jonathan Tyler leased the old Spring Gardens at Vauxhall, just south of the Thames. He turned them into a pleasure resort, hired an orchestra, and all the dandies of London and their sweethearts began to frequent the place. As the dandies passed one another along the favourite walks In

the gardens—Lambeth Walk, Italian Walk, Vauxhall Walk—they gave their customary form of greeting. It consisted of lifting the beribboned cane to the right hand and jerking the head over the right shoulder. To-day tenement houses border Lambeth Walk, but the Cockneys carry on the traditional greeting—and the orld dances it. The supporting programme with " The Lambeth Walk " includes " While America Sleeps," a further opus of the now famous " Crime Does Not Pay " series, sounding the alarm against a new threat to American security, the screen exposes the startling truth about the vast spy network lurking today in every corner of the nation; "Happily Buried," a mad but merry musical comedy concerning the love of presidents of rival waffle iron companies; and "Pathe News," up-to-the-minute pictorial journalism, and Cinesound News, with Charles Lawrence. Mayfair Theatre

" Listen Darling," which with " Break the News," will be screened at the Mayfair Theatre this evening and Thursday and Friday, furnishes one of the laughs of the year. Featuring Freddie Bartholomew and Judy Garland, with Mary Astor as the mother whose romance they attempt to guide, it is a gem of adolescent nonsense. The children in their eagerness to get Miss Astor away from the town banker (Lochart) and married to a

millionaire (Walter Pidgeon) lock her in a trailer and "kidnap" her. Unfortunately they take along little Scotty Beckett, who more than once throws everyone and everything into a state of laughable confusion before Walter Pidgeon and Miss Astor finally fall in love.

Jack Buchanan and Maurice Chevalier, who share the principal roles in "Break the News," comprise an unusual and intriguing combination, and the promise of good entertainment which their appearance in. double harness suggests. Satire and broad comedy are cleverly intermingled to produce a variety of situations and complications which give all the principals admirable scope for the display of their talents. The comedians are supported by a talented cast, which includes Dainty June Knight, Martha Labarr, Gertrude Musgrove, Garry Marsh, Wally Patch, Robb Wilton, and many others. " St. Martin's Lane " In the new Action Pictures release, "St. Martin's Lane," which is to be screened at the State Theatre on Friday, Laughton is called upon to sing and dance for the first .time in his screen career. In this original Clemence Dane story of London and the theatre queue entertainers, he appears as a busker whose piece de resistance is the recitation "The Green Eye of the Little Yellow God." When he meets Vivien Leigh, who plays the part of an unemployed Cockney girl, he becomes more ambitious, and so he forms a quartet in which Vivien, himself, Tyrone Guthrie, and Gus McNaughton appear. Tyrone Guthrie plays the mouth organ, Gus McNaughton the mandolin, while Laughton assists with accompaniments on the tin whistle. Vivien Leigh sings and dances with the trio, wearing top hats as a sort of chorus background and going through a few elementary dance steps as an accompaniment to her act. Writing of the film, the Sunday Graphic says:. "A richly comic, sentimental, and robust story of a London, which even Londoners don't know. It tells of the theatre queue entertainers, and of Charlie Saggers in particular, who thinks he's quite as

good an actor as, say, Charles Laughton, until, in a very moving finale, he's disillusioned. The whole film is sincere, human, and rattling good entertainment. Laughton is magnificent, and Vivien Leigh's work a revelation." St. James Theatre Jackie Moran, young star of Monogram's " Barefoot Boy," coming on Friday to the St. James Theatre, has many claims to distinction, among them " The Adventures of Tom Sawyer" and "Mother Carey's Chickens," but his favourite achievement, acccrding to young Mr Moran, was that he was " Deanna Durbin's first love interest." Jackie Moran was born in Matoon, Illinois, but lived most of his early years i.i Chicago. One day Mary Pickford came to town for personal appearances, and when Jackie came back-stage to get her autograph the great star was so impressed by the child's intelligent question:: about the theatre that whan he confided to her his ambition to be an actor, Miss Pickford advised his mother to take him to Hollywood. When Jackie was 11, in 1935, the Morans did come to Hollywood. Finally, he got a big break opposite Deanna Durbin in< "Mad About Music." Now comes Monogram's "Barefoot Boy," which establishes Jackie Moran as an outstanding juvenile star. The picture tells the story of the rejuvenation of a spoiled

city youth by a country boy, and of their adventures in solving the mystery of an old haunted house. Prominent in the cast are Marcia Mae Jones, Ealph Morgan, Claire Windsor, Matty Fain, and Marilyn Knowlden. A bored young society girl has the awakening of a lifetime when she steps off Park avenue for a new thrill and marries a newspaper reporter to get her name in the gossip columns, in Paramount's "Cafe Society," opening as the next attraction at the St. James Theatre on Friday next. Madeleine Carroll, playing the super-sophisti-cated debutante, elopes with Fred MacMurray, the reporter, in a last frantic effort to do something sensational, and wakes up to find herself tied to a man who despises everything about her. In a whirlwind series of events she turns in disgust from the life she has always led, explores a world she has never seen before, and awakens in time to fight for her love against tremendous odds. Shirley Ross co-stars with the pair. Film Topics Few, if any, women have been so signally honoured by posterity as Edith Cavell, stoical nurse, who died at the hands of a German firing squad, and about whom Herbert Wilcox's production, "Nurse Edith Cavell." starring Anna Neagle, tells. In Canada alone there are four towns called Cavell. There is a river in British Columbia and a Mount Edith Cavell in Jasper National Park. The mountain is reached via the Edith Cavell Glacier, where once a year memorial services are held for the martyr. Nursing and social chapters named after Edith Cavell exist in all English-speaking countries, and in Belgium. Probably the greatest tribute of all was paid in 1919 by the British Empire, when Miss Cavell's remains were disinterred and laid to rest among England's great in Westminster Abbey. Paul Robeson, who is back in London from the United States, will start work soon in "John Henry," the story of a negro who became a king of the cotton fields and railways.

Sir Cedric, Hardwicke has been engaged by Universal to provide the menace in "The Invisible Man Returns," sequel to Universale "The Invisible Man," released in 1932. The distinguished Britisher is the first player cast for this production. Sir Cedric has been appearing in M.G.M.'s "On Borrowed Time." He appeared previously in "Stanley and Livingstone." and the Broadway stage success, " Shadow and Substance."

Sonja Henie's tremendous hold on the entertainment world makes each of her pictures an extraordinary event. In " Second Fiddle " she enters a new phase of her career. The motivating plot of "Second Fiddle" is a dramatisation of stranger-than-fiction highlights of Miss Henie's own life. Grand Theatre :' <, The latest of the Jones Family sagas, "Everybody's Baby," opens to-day at the Grand Theatre. All the familiar members of the popular screen household celebrate the "blessed event" that comes to Bonnie and Herbert, who, newlyweds no longer, settle down to raise a family, only to find their family raising the baby for them. "Everybody's Baby " pokes good-natured fun at the many pseudo-scientific methods of child-rearing. When Dr Pillcoff (Reginald Denny) comes to Maryville lecturing on The Pillcoff Method—and incidentally selling his books and ser-

vices for a nice fee—the Joneses all .agree that the new Jones be raised in this modern manner.. The Pillcoff Method proves a very trying one to everyone, so that finally the harassed father joins forces with eight other victims of the system. Thanks to a little strategy cooked up by Grandma Jones (who is now a greatgrandma), Dr Pillcoff is thoroughly discredited and the Joneses can return to a normal existence once more. Jed Prouty. Shirley Deane, Spring Byington, Russel Gleason, Ken Howell, George Ernest, June Carlson, Florence Roberts, and Billy Mahan portray their usual Jones Family roles, with Reginald Denny, Robert Allen, Claire De Brey and Marvin Stephens also featured. A mystery so baffling that even the detective who solves it does not suspect the murderer until the second before he nabs him is unravelled in " Inspector Hornleigh," the Twentieth Century production which ',* also at the Grand Theatre. Gordon Harker brings the character of Hornleigh, one of Europe's most popular radio characters, to life on the screen. " Inspector Hornleigh " pursues a murderer and a hobby—stan.p collecting—with equal calm. Alastair Sim supplies much of the comedy in the role of Sergeant Bingham, his bungling assistant. It all begins when the porter of a little wayside inn is found murdered, and' the chief clue is the Budget bag of the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Hugh Williams, Steve Geray. Wally Patch, Edward Underdown and Miki Hood are also prominent in the cast.