The World of Motion Pictures

Southland Times, Issue 21288, 8 January 1931, Page 11

The World of Motion Pictures

CIVIC TALKIES. To-night: “The Three .Sisters” (Louise Dressier, Kenneth Mac Kenna, Addie McPhail, June Collyer, Joyce Compton, Tom Patricola). Saturday: “The Bad One” (Dolores Del Rio, Edmund Lowe, Don Alvarado, Mitchell Lewis). The scenes in “The Three Sisters” are laid in the romantic setting of a little semialpine village in Italy, and the story is a thoroughly human narrative of a mother and her three daughters at the period of the late World War. How the mother, Marta, complies with a steady stream of demands, and how she is repaid by seeing each of the girls taken from her, is the theme of the production.’ Louise Dressier plays the difficult part of the mother, while Joyce Compton, June Collyer and Addie McPhail portray the trio of daughters. “The Three Sisters” is now showing at the Civic Theatre. Paul Sloane directed. Dolores Del Rio and Edmund Lowe who appeared together in “What Price Glory” are again co-starred in “The Bad One,” Miss Del.* Rio’s first all-talking picture, showing at the Civic on Saturday next, With Don Alvarado she' dances her favourite tango.

Edmund Grainger will supervise the production at the Fox studios of “Land Rush,” adapted from the story “Three Bad Men,” which Benjamin Stoloff will direct, and “La Estrella,” the next directorial assignment of Alexander Korda, based on a story by Wilbur Hall.

Tod Browning is to direct “The Up and Up,” a race track story following the completion of filming of “Dracula,” which features Bela Lugosi. The new Browning vehicle is to be adapted from the successful New York stage play by Eva Kay Flint and Martha Madison.

Warner Brothers’ screen production of “Illicit,” a play by Edith Fitzgerald and Robert Riskin, is nearing completion. The cast of the screen version includes Barbara Stanwyck, James Rennie, Charles Butterworth, Ricardo Cortez, Natalie Moorhead, Joan Blondell, Grant Mitchell and Claude Gillingwater.

“To-day,” a picturization of the stage play, has had its New York premiere. Conrad Nagel and Catherine Dale Owen head the cast, which includes Judith Vosselii, Sarah Padden, John Maurice Sullivan, Julia Swayne Gordon, William Bailey, Robert Thornby and Drew Demarest. William Nigh directed the picture.

“How to Grow Hogs,” a two-reel film sponsored by the Bureau of Animal Industry, is a recent release of the office of motion pictures of the United States Department of Agriculture. It deals with economical methods of hog production and may be borrowed from the government by farmers without cost, except for transportation charges.

Slim Summerville is completing the fifth of a series of two reel comedies and will join the cast 'of “Many a Slip,” which Vin Moore will direct for Universal and in which Lewis Ayres is to have the male lead. “Many a Slip” is a story of modern youth and has been adapted to the screen from the New York stage play of the same title. Carl ’Laemmle Jr. is now looking for a girl to play opposite Ayres.

“Apron Strings,” a stage play by Dorance Davis, has been purchased by Carl Laemmle Jr., of Universal for production next season. The story deals with a modern, young woman and her bashful but wealthy fiance, how their courtship develops and then how the young man finally yields to the charms of his beautiful wife-to-be. Jefferson de Angelis starred in the New York stage version of the story.

Radio Pictures have acquired fc the rights to the following six new stories for early filming: “White Shoulders,” adapted from the Rex Beach story, “Recoil,” featuring Evelyn Brent and Pucardo Cortez; “Children of the Streets,” an original story by Robert Milton and Guy Bolton, featuring Betty Compson; “Kept Husbands,” an original story being adapted by Forren Halsey, featuring Sue Carol; “Sour Grapes,” the stage play by Vincent Lawrence; “Waiting at the Church,” a story by Vandab. Owen, and “Private Secretary,” a story by Alan Brener Schultz. "ALL STAGE” TALKIE. “Top Speed,” a new First National picture, affords an example of the toll lately levied upon the stage by motion pictures. Every one of the featured players in the cast, from Joe E. Brown down, was drawn from Broadway. Mr Brown has been in “the profession” since the age of nine, when he made his debut not as an actor, but as an “aerial acrobat.” He was the fifth and youngest of the “Five Marvellous Ashtons,” who travelled with Ringling’s circus. Having attained the ripe maturity of seventeen he took up professional baseball, starting with St. Paul and filially attaining the glory of a brief engagement with the Yankees. Then came vaudeville, which naturally led to musical comedy and revue. Ten years ago, in "Listen, Lester,” Brown was a featured comedian, and other appearances are recorded in "Jim Jam Jems,” “The Greenwich Village Follies,” “Betty Lee,” “Captain Jinks’ and ‘Twinkle-Twinkle.” Bernice Claire, who is twenty-one years old, began her theatrical career at the top when she followed Vivienne Segal as prim a donna in the original stage production of “The Desert Song.” The prestige of this accomplishment led straight to Hollywood. Jack Whiling won his Broadway laurels as one of those likeable young leading men who arc indispensable to musical comedy. His first appearance in this capacity was with Billie Burke in “Annie Dear.”

Theatregoers saw Frank McHugh on the boards of the Ziegfield Theatre in “Show Girl” as Denny, the boy friend of Dixie Dugan. They saw Laura Lee in two Shubert revues last year—"A Night in Venice” and “Broadway Nights”—in both of which she was the leading comedienne. Rita Flynn was a show girl in several Broadway musical productions. All these players belong to the newer army of invasion. A veteran who made the leap from stage to screen long ago is Edmund Breese. Almost a generation ago he was playing his best remembered roles, the domineering millionaire in Charles Klein’s “The Lion and' the Mouse,” at the Lyceum Theatre.