Indianapolis Times, Indianapolis, Marion County, 13 October 1937 — Page 26

"The Perfect SpecImen''—that's the title of Joan Blon. dell's next picture with Errol Flynn, It might just as well be the title, ef this picture too, don't you think?

THE INDIANAPOLIS TIMES

Curtains up on Beauty

Film entertainment is going to be lighter and brighter and lovelier—this fall, thanks to the presence of these six young ladies. They are all familiar with American movie audiences except one-—Sigrid Gurle, importation from Norway who fills ner first role in this country as the daughter of grim Kublai Khan in Samuel Goldwyn's “The Adventures of Marco Polo.” Opposite her is Gary Cooper Venetian traveler who nearly disrupts an international trade route by falling for her Scandinavian beauty, Joan Crawford wiil be romancing this fall against the colorful background of Trieste and the Tyrol with two earnest admirers, Franchot Tone and Robert Young. Picture is called “The Bride Wore Red,” released by Metro-Goldwyn-Maver, “Angel” is die Dietrich's newest, in which she plays the wife of a European diplomat who goes off to Paris for a little affaire de coeur and ends up in a lot of embarrassment when her husband takes time off from Geneva or somewhere to pay a little visit to Paris himself,

Lovely Sigrid Gurie pauses during her role in "The Adventures of Marce Polo" so that we can see her Oriental beauty through the camera lens, It's her first American film, one of the season's most important. Right, Dolores Del Rio shows you how she will dance in the forthsoming “Lancer Spy," which is packed with love scenes and action. :

Ernest Lubitsch (who tells his story on another page) lirected for Paramount. War intrigues and the business of spying forms the background for “Lancer Spy,” a 20th Century-Fox production with Dolores del Rio and George Sanders. They take time off from the job of risking their necks for their countries to develop plenty of heart interest. Errol Flynn is the perfect specimen in Warner Brothers’ picture of the same name, and Joan Blondell {inds herself faced with the job of keeping up with him. There doesn’t seem to be any good reason why the script writers couldn’t have given Joan the same appellation. In “Stage Door,” the RKO-Radio adaption from the stage hit, Ginger Rogers is a young kid living in a theatrical boarding house, balancing her determination to get ahead on the stage against her yearning to go back home where she can settle down and take things easy. Katharine Hepburn lives in the same boarding house and what happens? You guess,

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WEDNESDAY, OCT. 13, 1937

Joan Crawford in "The

Bride Wore Red"; left,

Marlene Dietrich," Angel."

LEN

A pretty miss who thinks she would do very well on the stage— that's Ginger Rogers in her next picture, "Stage Door." She sings and dances and thinks up many smart cracks,

Warners Start Work on “Robin Hood”

Errol Flynn Heads Brawny Cast in $1,600,000 Color Film.

Unfortunately no twelfth century statistician bothered to keep track of the actual cost to the gentry of Nottingham and environs of the prankish purse-cutting indulged in by Robin Hood and his Merrie Men along Watling St. in the neighborhood of Sherwood forest. It is a fair guess, however, that the most generous estimate would not even approach the $1,600,000 it is costing War. ners this fall to bring “The Adventures of Robin Hood” to the screen in technicolor. In those pastoral days hose and doublets of Lincoln green apparently grew right on the greenwood tree. Nowadays the expensive hand of OrryKelly turns them out for a sum, per hundred archers, that would have permitted good Robin to pay off th® mortgage on Sir Richard's castle and still retire at an early age to a leisurely life of rectitude. There are other big expenses, too--moving the company out to the natural forests around Chico, Cal., housing and feeding everybody there, equipping them with proper armor, bucklers, broadswords, quarterstaffs and archery supplies.

Flynn Fitted for Role.

There is no advance information on Errol Flynn's proficiency with the longbow, although there is a story that he was once pinked in the shin by a poisoned arrow unslung by a New Guinea bushman. All other things being equal, however, and the longbow question laid aside for the moment, there can be little doubt that Errol Flynn is the Robin Hood of his era. Not since the days of the elder Fairbanks, who was the film Robin Hood of fifteen years ago, has the screen been blessed with one so gifted in the art of bravado and swashbuckle as is Flynn, Others have trod the forests and sailed the mains, crossed swords in byways and led the Burgundians to triumphs, but these have, of late, been mere songsters or perhaps introspective gentlemen of messianic tendencies,

Flynn, however, is not burdened bv motive, and neither was Robin Hood, in spite of what Tammany would like to believe about taking from the rich to give to the poor. He is the extravert of the high road, the Beauxcaire of his dav with overtones of Froissart—an adventurer for adventure's sake, He is the modern Merrie Man, and his maid, Marian, Olivia“de Havilland, might indeed have been madcap Robin's own choice.

Surrounding these two is one of those casts that only a Hollywood could provide. Alan Hale, for exe ample, as Littla John. He was the Little John to Fairbanks’ Robin in the first screen version. Basil Rathbone, the swaggering Tybalt, is the unregenerate Sir Guy of Gisborne. Gentle Ian Hunter is the benign King Richard I; Claude Rains the less charitable Prince John.

Others in Cast. N

Herbert Mundin, the Barkis of “David Coppere field,” is Much, the miller’s son; Pat Knowles is handsome Will Scarlet, and correct and slightly pompous Melville Cooper is the High Sheriff of Nottingham. The only deviation from the fullest spirit of the tale is Eugene Pallette as Friar Tuck. His suitability for the generous humor of the whime sical friar is apparent, but even his stanchest ade herent will not insist that the 1937 Pallette, portly at best, could be asked to dump Robin Flynn into a stream and then wage six hours of man-to-man quarterstafling with him. This may necessitate some slight alteration, either in Mr. Pallette or the script, but, in the main, the legend should come through in true classic proportions, with just the right technicolor shade of Lincoln green for the first time on any screen. The director is William Keighley, who guided Flynn through his last adventure in costume, “The Prince and the Pauper,” with the Mauch twins, and who had his fling at fechnicolor last year with God's Country and the Woman.”