The World of Motion Pictures

Southland Times, Issue 21265, 11 December 1930, Page 15

The World of Motion Pictures

THE REGENT. Now Showing: “The Richest Man In the World” (Robert Montgomery, Leila Hyams, Louis Mann, Elliott Nugent), Saturday: “The Ixicked Door” (Rod La Rocque, Barbara Stanwyck, William

Boyd, Betty Bronson). Coming Attractions: “Is Everybody Happy?” (Ted Lewis, Ann Pennington, Alice Day) ; “All's Button”—English Comedy (Tubby Edlln, Alf Goddard, Norah Swinburne, Spencer Trevor, Polly Ward). *

- Now showing at the Regent is M-G-M s picture, "The Richest Man in the World,” in which the stage character actor, Louis Mann, is the central figure. This is not a story of fabulous . wealth, when wealth means an abundance of money. This inAn is the richest in the world because of a kindly and loving disposition which is inanifest in his treatment of his five children. At the outset of the picture they are all youngsters; at the finish all have reached maturity. One is killed at the war; another, having become a doctor, refuses to help the father who gave him his profession, when the old man is in straightened circumstances; the girls marry somewhat disastrously. Mann, as the father, gives a fine performance, supported by Leila Hyams, Robert Montgomery’, Mary Doran, Francis X. Bushman, Junior, Cara Blandick and Elliott Nugent, from whose scenario the film was made.

On Saturday the Regent will screen "The Locked Door,” an all-dialogue United Artists production based on Channing Pollock’s well-known, play, "The Sign on the Door.” The story concrns Lawrence Reagan and his wife Ann, the woman accused of the shooting of Frank Devereaux in his bachelor apartment. Reagon confesses to the police that he, and not his wife, fired the .38 calibre ball into Deveraux’s chest. His wife was discovered locked in the room with Deveraux when the Bellevue Hotel manager and part of his staff burst through the locked door on which a sign reading “Don’t Disturb,” was hanging from the outside. A call for help, and the reports of two shots came through the switchboard of the hotel, when the telephone was tipped over in a struggle. That is the situation worked out in “The Locked Door,” which introduces another Broadway star to the screen in the person of Barbara Stanwyck, who earned great praise for her work in this picture. Devereaux is played by Rod La Rocque, Ann by’ Barbara Stanwyck and Reagan by William Boyd. Betty Bronson and Harry Mestayer, the district attorney, Harrv Stubbs, Mack Swain, Zasu Pitts, Edward' Dillon and Clarence Burton complete the cast.

Four dances by Ann Pennington are featured in “Is Everybody Happv?” the Warner Bros, and Vitaphone production which comes to the Regent next week, with the famous Ted Lewis in the star role. Two of these are entirely triginal, and the others are adaptations of dances which have assisted in elevating the light-footed Ann to the topmost rung of her profession. In this talking, singing and dancing picture Miss Pennington is first seen as a member of the Follies company in New York, and later as the assistant of Ted Lewis in the stage act with which he makes his bow to big time vaudeville. Other prominent members of the cast of “Is Everybody Happy?” are Alice Day, Lawrence Grant, Julia Swayne Gordon, Purnell. Pratt and Otto Hoffman. Archie L. Mayo directed and the original screen story’ was written by Joseph A. Jackson and James A. Starr.

It is not. generally known that Lon Chaney died as a result of devotion to his work. The man of a thousand faces undermined bis health by the painful contortions he underwent in depicting the grotesque characters that brought him fame. He literally tortured himself for hours on end by assuming these roles, and although he was in bad health for two years prior to his death, he was so keen on acting that he refused to quit. He was finally weakened by a throat affection (said to have been contracted in the. voice impersonations he made in “The Unholy Three”) and anae-’ mia.

There is no let-down in the production schedule of Fox Films. Four pictures are in production and four others are due to start any day. Being filmed are “Lightnin,’” .with Will Rogers; “Week-End Wives,” with Edmund Lowe and Tommy Clifford; “The Spy,” with Neil Hamilton and Kay Johnson, and “Once a Sinner,” with Dorothy Mackaill and Joel McCrea. About to start production are “The Man Who Came Back,” co-starring Charles Farrell and Janet Gaynor; “East Lynne,” with Ann Harding, Clive Brook and Conrad Nagel; “The Seas Beneath,” with George O’Brien and Marion Lessing, and “This Modern World,” featuring Warner Baxter.

Benita Hume, the young London film actress who went to New York some months ago to play her original part with Ivor Novello in his “Symphony in Two Flats,” has signed a three-years’ contract with the Paramount company at a salary which is understood to begin at 300 a week. New York theatre critics are loud in their praises of Miss Hume’s beauty and “style.” She is 24, and for five 'years past has been extremely active in building up a theatrical and fiim reputation in England. Her first work came promptly when she walked into a studio, having just spent all her money on a holiday, with only the most desperate hope that anyone would take her seriously. She was given a test and engaged at once for a small part. Her first real film hit was made in a few minutes’ acting as a telephone operator in “Easy Virtue.”

A talkie version of the stage farce, “A Warm Corner,” scores one more success for British pictures, according to the critics, one of whom says, “Leslie Henson, as the millionaire corn-plaster manufacturer, whose escapades on the Lido as a bachelor under an assumed name, lead to such an inextricable imbroglio when he returns to his castle in England and to. his legitimate spouse, causes a riot of laughter. He is admirably backed by the other members of the cast, all of whom —with the exception of Belle Chrystal, who takes the part of Peggy, the heiress to the cornplaster fortune—were in the original stage play. Connie Ediss, as the millionaire’s wife, Austin Melford, as Peter Price, and Arthur Wellesley, as Thomas Tamer, distinguish themselves particularly.” Heather Thatcher, the vivacious musical comedy star, is also in the cast. “As a special titillation for cinema-goers” is the description of another critic with regard-to a scene in which Miss Thatcher, soaping herself elaborately in her bath, escapes afterwards outside the limits of the screen just as her enveloping towel is drawn from her.

"Feet First,” is Harold Lloyd’s second audible film. Barbara Kent plays the feminine lead in this comedy, which reveals Mr Lloyd as a clerk in a Honolulu shoe store.

Al Rogers is nearing the final stages of the Tiffany production, “Aloha.” The ca-tt, includes Ben Lyon, Racquel Torres, Thelma Todd, Marian Douglass, T. Roy Barnes and Otis Harlan.

The Tiffany’ talking Chimp comedies are to be made in foreign languages. The first two, "The Blimp Mystery” and “The Little Covered Wagon,” it is said, have already been adapted to Spanish and German.

Jack Oakie’s' new picture, "Sea Legs,” in which Lillian Roth, Eugene Pallette and Harry Green will also be seen, has been chosen as the screen attraction for the fourth anniversary week of Paramount in New York.

First National Pictures, Inc., have purchased the screen rights to the novel "Chances,” by A. Hamilton Gibbs, and also to the magazine story “Yellow Prisoners,” by Sir Philip Gibbs. "Chances” will be produced next year with Douglas Fairbanks Jr.

The first print of Warner Brothers’ production, “Captain Thunder,” has been made. In the cast of this picture are Fay Wray, Victor Varconi, Charles Judels, Robert Elliot, Bert Roach, Frank Campeau, Robert Edeson, John Saint-Poliis, Robert Emmet Keane and Natalie Moorhead.

Mitzi Green, who celebrated her tenth birthday on October 23, is teamed with Junior Durkin in “Tom Sawyer,” Paramount’s version of the Mark Twain classic, in which Jackie Coogan will make his talking screen debut as Tom. This was to have had its New York premiere last week.

"Laughter,” co-featuring Nancy Carroll and Frederic March, has been completed. Donald Ogden Stewart has written the dialogue for the film, which was directed at the New York studio by’ H. D’Abbadi D’Arrast from an original story of his own authorship. Frank Morgan, Diane Ellis and' Glen Anders head the supporting cast.

Dorothy Arzner, director of “Sarah and Son” and “The Better Wife,” has been despatched to the Paramount studios in New York to take charge of Claudette Colbert’s next all-talking film as yet untitled. Production is scheduled to commence shortly, with Frederic March heading a cast of notable stage and . screen players.

Leo White, screen veteran who, as the Count, co-starred with Charlie Chaplin in many of his early films, plays one of the chief comedy roles in “Along Came Youth,” Charles Rogers’ current Paramount musical production. Lloyd Corrigan and Norman McLeod are co-directing the film, with Frances Dee, Stuart Erwin, William Austin and Evelyn Hall in the cast.

One hundred Navajo Indians are appearing in a new Paramount picture directed by Otto Brower and Edwin Knopf. "The Santa Fe Trail,” which will be released in the near future, is adapted from the nover, “Spanish Acres,” by Hal Evarts. Rosita Moreno is featured opposite the star, Richard Arlen, and Eugene Pallette, Mitzi Green, Junior Durkin and Hooper Atchley head the supporting cast.

John Cromwell, who directed George Bancroft in "The Mighty” and all of William Powell’s starring successes, has been assignto direct "Unfit to Print,” the latest Paramount all-talking film to star Bancroft. It is a newspaper story adapted from an original story by’ Oliver H. P. Garrett, author of “Street, of Chance.” Kay’ Francis will be featured in the feminine lead.

Tiffany Productions, Inc., has borrowed bne of Paramount’s camera men for the photographing of Western scenes in its production of “Headin’ North.” He is Archie Stout, who has invented some motion picture camera devices. The cast in this picture will include Bob Steele, Barbara Luddy, Harry Allen, Eddie Dunn and others. The director is J. P. McCarthy.

"The Queen of Scandal” is now the title of Evelyn Layc’s first talking picture which United Artists are announcing with such a blare of trumpets. But this may not mean anything, considering the number of titles it has already had. When Louis Bromficld wrote the story he called it "Lilli”; and it did seem for a time it really was to be left at “Moon Madness.”

The average wage of a Hollywood extra is 11/- a week, Jerome Beatty discloses in “The Modern Screen Magazine.” There are more than 17,000 men, women and children in the film city, according to this writer, competing for the 800 or 900 jobs open to extras every day. Two pounds a day is the usual wage and out of that extras are expected to furnish a complete wardrobe.

The opening scenes in Mary Pickford’s latest picture, “Kiki,” will be filmed with the “rotary shot,” an ingenious pulley device which allows the camera to “shoot” in three directions, two of them simultaneously. It is the invention of William Cameron Menzies, the art director. Among the players in this film are Reginald Denny, Margaret Livingston, Joseph Cawthorn, Fred Walton, Phil Tead and Fred Warren.

With the addition of Francis Ford, the cast of featured players in the new Fox Film, “The Seas Beneath,” now. numbers twenty. Under the supervision of John Ford, the director, it is announced by the film concern that United States submarines and destroyers will perform wartime manoeuvres for two weeks at a temporary naval base at Catalina Island. A WIN FOR BRITAIN. In filming Mr John Galworthy's convict drama “Escape,” as the first British contribution to an alliance with the powerful R.K.O. Company of the United States. Mr Basil Dean is said to have done a brilliant piece of work. “Apart from a few moments of the atmospheric, sequences in Hyde Park,” writes a correspondent, “it is dramatically alive throughout—from the fox-hunt, which symbolizes Mr Galsworthy’s passionate regard for all fugitives, to the recapture of the man who meets- varying notions of sportsmanship during his desperate fight for liberty. “Captain Matthew Denant, his feelings wrung by the kill in a fox-hunt in which he has taken part, has a late walk in Hyde Park.

“He talks in a friendly way to a girl of the town who has accosted him. A plain-clothes policeman arrests the girl, and Denant, protesting that she has not annoyed him, knocks down the officer, who strikes his head on a rail and dies.

“Denant has a five years’ sentence and his attempt to escape from Dartmoor is the rest of the story. “Sir Gerald du Maurier gives a fine performance, which gathers in force as he goes on, in the part of the hero. The other characters are simply cameos, but the biggest collection of ■well-known British actors and actresses yet seen in one film has been gathered for their presentation.

“Gordon Harker has one of his vivid studies as, a fellow convict. Horace Hodges was given a special cheer at last night’s private view for his picture of a retired judge who pierces the disguise but refuses to give the man away, and Lewis Casson is admirable as the parson with whom he seeks sanctuary. "Of the ladies, young Ann Casson stands out, partly because of the beautiful way in which she has been photographed. Mabel Poulton, as the woman of the town, Edna Best, as the lady who protects the man in her bedroom, Madeleine Carroll, as another of his protectors, and Marie Ney, as her reluctant sister, are among the others who give charming support. “In the foxhunt we have many close views of the hunted animal itself, and the symbolism is emphasized hauntingly by the close-up grouping of the mouths of. hounds at the time of the kill'. “There has never yet been a first-class talking picture with so much English scenery.”-