Indianapolis Times, Indianapolis, Marion County, 30 March 1939 — Page 24

THURSDAY, MARCH 30, 1030 [UNA GETS IN SWING OF THINGS

Miss Cornell Arrives for Comedy Bow

Doesn't Know What She Will Do If Audience Laughs at Her.

MOVIES

By JAMES THRASHER

EWS that “The Lady Vanishes” is in town should be enough to send all Alfred Hitchcock enthusiasts scurrying in the direction of the Rivoli, where the film opens

tonight for a three-day engagement. About 90 per cent of all readers who have proceeded this far will now ask, “Well, what and why is an Alfred Hitchcock enthusiast?” ‘Mr. Hitchcock is the English director who made such things as “The 39 Steps” and “A Woman Alone,” which were 1% seen hereabouts, as well as many other pictures which IR have won him a devoted following in most Englishspeaking portions of the world. His success and popularity are not of the “arty” sort. nor is his claim to fame based on symbolism or weird camera angles. What Mr. Hitchcock does, and superlatively, is to chill his audiences into delighted goose flesh. He can take a melodrama and pile suspense on suspense until the customers are in an eye-popping, handkerchief-wringing state. “The Lady Vanishes” is his latest product, and its New York run, helped on by some flattering re‘views, was a lengthy one. In fact, it seems that the Mr. Thrasher only thing which pleases a certain class of New Yorkers more than a Hitchcock picture is a visit from Mr. Hitchcock himself, He 1s -a special favorite with Manhattan's chefs, who hitch up their aprons, reach in the ice box for the juciest steaks and prepare for an appreciative audience as soon as his boat docks. Mr. Hitchcock is an enormous man, and he loves to eat. As for the movies, he has somewhat less enthusiasm. » A favorite story is that, during a New York sojourn, the director disclosed the fact that he never had seen one of his famous movies (“The 39 Steps,” I believe) since it came out of the cutting room. So he promptly was escorted to a theater where the picture was showing. But while his hosts were enjoying the flim’s thrills all over again, their creator &ropped off to sleep, and dozed through the entire performance. 3

Katharine Cornell, one of the American theater's most distinguished actresses, arrived in Indianapolis this morning as excited] 3 as a schoolgirl before her first dance. Reason for the excitement is that| Ss tonight will mark Miss Cornell's first| | appearance in a comedy. It is S. N. Behrman’s “No Time For Comedy,” which will have its first performance anywhere at English’s And the play is a comedy, Miss Cornell said, despite the contradictory title. “I told Mr. Behrman that nothing would make me so happy as (io have the play really ‘go,’ ” she said.

Not Used to Comedy

“But I don’t know what I shall do when people laugh. ‘Romeo and Juliet’ and ‘Candida’ have their lighter moments, but I am not used to comedy.” With Miss Cornell and the cast were Mr. Behrman and Guthrie McClintic, the actress’ husband and director. The current play is the Cornell-McClintic combination’s first association with the Playwrights’ Company, of which Mr. Behrman is a member, and the merger brings together some of the most famous theatrical names. Robert E. Sherwood and Sidney Howard, other members of the Playwrights, were to arrive today on a later train Their other colleagues, Maxwell Anderson and Elmer Rice, altered their plans at the last minute and did not make the trip. Mr. Behrman said that, during the Playwrights’ first season as producers, the coming together of five distinctive creative temperaments had not produced the predicted volcanic effects.

Divergent Views Helpful

“The results are all to the good,” the playwright said. “We all sit in rehearsals, and the different viewpoints are very helpful. Even the smallest details do not go unnoticed. “Just the other day, at the dress rehearsal, one of my colleagues noticed that some flowers on the stage cut off the view, of the actors. > *ihda play once, he Sold me, tnt ® is Trevor, ‘and the only thing that got a g0ood|| jonn Wayne. Andy Devine, Thomas notice were the flowers.’ ” :40, 3:45, 6:50 and 10.

PEGGY FEARS OF rown, at 11:25, 2:30, 5:35 and 8:45. TORCH FAME ILL

HOLLYWOOD, March 30 (U. P.). —Peggy Fears, the New York torch singer and former wife of A. C.

Una Merkel gets out the old concertina and into the swing of things for her forthcoming appearance with Gene Krupa and his orchestra in the movie, “Some Like It Hot.”

Don't Ever, Ever Forget the Director

Many persons have tried to sell the public on the importance of a motion picture director, but to slight avail. The latest is Laurence Olivier, who is in town for his appearance with Katharine Cornell at English’s tonight. : Upon returning to New York after a recent Hollywood stint, Mr. Olivier granted an interview wherein he held forth upon the director’s power to make or mar both picture and performer.

The man with the megaphone is the one to be suited, and what he says goes. It is his duty to set the pitch and mood of a scene, and to see that the hodge-podge of unrelated shots is put together and unfolded in orderly dramatic sequence. Yet, in viewing a movie, few eyes look beyond the stars and the action to see what the director has done with both. There are, how=ever, a few directors whose names are “box-office.” Mr. Hitchcock is one of them, at least in England. And he doubtless will become more familiar to American movie-goers, since he is to undertake his first Hollywood assignments shortiv. These include the direction of “Rebecca” for Samuel Goldwyn, and “Success” and “Titanic” for David Selznick.

Pitch In, Says Mr. DeMille to Mr. Roosevelt

Alexander Korda is another megaphoner whose name rates equal billing with the stars on both sides of the Atlantic. But the most famous of Hollywood's directors, at least since David W. Griffith's retirement, is Cecil B. DeMille. Mr. DeMille has become famous not only because he is a good picture-maker, but because he knows the value of promotion and showmanship. From the days of the gilded bathtubs to his latest epic, he has managed to keep in the public eye with remarkable consistency. His latest bid for fame just about tops them all. This example ' of promotional genius, as set forth in the following United Press dispatch, renders any comment ineffectual: “HOLLYWOOD, March 30 (U, P.).—Cecil B. DeMille, the pro-ducer-director, mailed a suggestion to the White House today that President Roosevelt write the foreword for his latest movie, ‘Union acific.’ “Mr. DeMille told Mr. Roosevelt that such a foreword would be a gesture of friendliness to the railroads.”

Katherine Cornell, S. N. . Times Photo,

Behrman (center) and Guthrie McClintic, star, author and director, respectively, of “No Time for Comedy,” shown upon their arrival in Indianapolis today. Miss Cornell "will star in the world premiere of Mr. Behrman’s play at English’s tonight. ;

Second Guild Film Success

Director Uses Camera With Telling Effect.

Opening Tomorrow— Circle

JOHN BOLES (on stage)—With Joe Rines and his orchestra; Rosse and June Mann, dance team; others. “WINNER TAKE ALL” (on screen)—Tony Martin, Gloria Stuart, Henry Armetta, Slim Summerville. About the pretty miss who undertakes to be a boxer’s manager as well as his sweetheart and, after the usual vicisitudes, succeeds at both jobs. ;

WHAT, WHEN, WHERE

APOLLO

“Love Affair,” with Charles Boyer, Irene Dunne, at 12:46, 3:49, 6:52 and

:55. : “The Great Man Votes,” with John Barrymore, Virginia Weidler, at 11:34, 2:37, 5:40 and 8:43,

CIRCLE

Vincent Lopez and his orchestr with Patricia Ellis, Ben Blue, Abbot and Costello, on stage at 12:50, 3:35, 6:35 and 9:20. “Never Say Die,” with Bob Hope, Martha Raye, on screen at 11, 1:55, 4:50, 7:40 and 10:25, ”

ENGLISH'S

“No Time for Comedy,” a new y S. N: Behrman starring ! Cornell, with Lawrence Olivier and Margalo Gillmoge. ingagement through Saturday.” Curtain at 8:30; Saturday matinee, 2:30.

INDIANA

“Three Smart Girls Grow Up,” with Deanna Durbin, Nan Grey. Helen Parrish, at 12:49, 3.45, 6:59 and

“Beauty for the Asking,” with Lu$e Ball, at 11:41, 2:46, 5:51 and

SIGN FOR GRID FILM

HOLLYWOOD, March 30 (U. P.), —Joe E. Brown and Martha Raye,

both possessors of famous big mouths, have been signed to act in a football film entitled “Thousand Dollars a Touchdown.” Paramount will produce the picture.

Indiana : “MIDNIGHT”—with Claudette Colbert, Don Ameche, John Barrymore, Francis Lederer and Mary Astor. Screen play by Charles Brackett and Billy Wilder; directed by Mitchell Leisen. A third-rate dancer with first-rate ambitions falls for a hard-boiled taxi driver but she still wants a rich husband. She poses as a countess, so the cabby tacks a “count” on his name and wins his lady. : “KING OF CHINATOWN”—with Anna May Wong, Akim Tamiroff and J. Carrol Naish. Screen play by Lillie Hayward and Irving Reis; directed by Nick Grinde. Mostly about a Chinatown gambling racket in which the boss is shot by a traitorous henchman and nursed back to health by a Chinese woman doctor. He gets shot again and leaves his fortune to his nurse to send an ambulance corps te China. :

play Katherine

“Swing That Cheer”

Plus! “ESCAPE BY NIGHT”

HURRY! FINAL DAY!

There are, in the teeming marts of Hollywood, actors who can equal or surpass the cast of the French film, “Un Carnet de Bal.” But apparently there is no one with the inspiration or inclination to use a camera with the telling effect of Julien Duvivier, its director. So the second event of the Filmarte Guild's series, in the Indianapolis Athletic Club last evening,

turned out to be an interesting one for those interested in the movies’ progress as a medium of artistic expression. Likewise the story proved to be a diverting one. Christine, a lovely and lonely widow, tries to recapture her youth and discover her life's purpose by finding the ardent swains of her first ball of 20 years ago.

Loew’s

“FAST AND LOOSE”—with Rosalind Russell, Robert Montgomery, Reginald Owen and Ralph Morgan. Screen play by Harry Kurnitz; directed by Edwin L. Marin. : An adventuresome and clever book dealer and his wife solve several murders and the mystery of a stolen Shakespearean manuscript. Plenty of slugging and false suspects make it interesting and, of course, you never suspect the true crook. “FOUR GIRLS IN WHITE”—with Florence Rice, Ann Rutherford, Una Merkel, Mary Howard and Alan Marshal. Screen play by Dorothy Yost; directed by S. Sylvan Simon. Mostly about what goes on in nurses training. One nurse eters training to get a rich husband. She gives up one prospect in favor of a younger sister and is shunned by fellow workers as being an indirect cause of the death of a fellow nurse. She redeems herself by her work fn a train disaster.

Blumenthal, was confined in a hospital today with laryngitis. Her scheduled appearance at a film colony night club was postponed from Tuesday to tomorrow night.

LUCILLE BALL FOR THE PATRIC KNOWLES ASKING

By PAUL HARRISON

"HOLLYWOOD

town where, squired by the sixth suitor (now a hair-dresser) she revisits the scene of her first wonderful ball. Then, at home, comes final consolation. Nearby she finds the homeless: son of the seventh swain, now dead. > In the final scene she is sending the youngster off to his first dance. “A first ball is as important as a first cigaret,” she tells him, “but no more so.”

LOEW IS LINKED TO UNITED ARTISTS

HOLLYWOOD, March 30 (U. P.). —United Artists further expanded its distribution tieup with a contract whereby David L. Loew will produce two pictures a year, for the next 10 years, to be released | through United Artists. Mr. Loew for 20 years was vice president and director of Loew’s, Inc., theatrical holding company.

OLLYWOOD, March 30.—In case you've wondered what ever happened to Jim Thorpe, he’s still around. The recent flurry of frontier pictures means a lot fo the 51 year-old Indian who won immortal fame as an athlete. Jim has had some lean years lately. : After the 1912 Olympic Games, when King Gustave V proclaimed: “Sir, you are the greatest athlete in the world!” Jim came back to tumultous welcomes in America. But he was stripped of his trophies when it was discovered he once had played a little professional baseball in a Carolina bush league. So he really turned professional then, played in the major leagues for seven years and organized

First Committed Suicide The first committed suicide for love of her, and his demented mother still awaits his return. The second has turned from law to running a night club and presiding over the Gallic equivalent of a “mob.” He is carried away to prison while he and Christine for a moment have

pendages whipped up by the makeup department. You can’t

professional football. By 1930 he was broke. Unrecognized, he painted oil tanks for nearly a year. In 1931 he dug ditches for Los Angeles County at $4 a day. Then somebody discovered him and Universal gave him a part in a picture. Later he appeared in a series of football shorts. Subsequently Thorpe has had some bit roles and extra jobs, but mostly he has just sat in his little bungalow and waited for the telephone to ring. . Until now, the studios didn’t seem to need any Indians—not even the greatest of them all.

# = ” Franchot Tone not only will return to Hollywood, but to his old studio. Metro has paid $75,000 for the play, “Gentle People,” in which Tone and Sylvia Sidney have the leads, and hell repeat his role in the film version. :

2 2 ” A COUPLE of agencies in Hollywood specialize in renting old and odd automobiles to the studios, but they have no monopoly on the business. Even some of the picture people let their cars work for them. Constance Bennett's and Loretta Young’s fancy chariots are used in pictures for $50 a day. So is the sleek convertible owned by Cliff ‘Bergere, race driver and stunt man. That long town car used by Don Ameche and Claudette Colbert in “Midnight” belongs to the Countess Dorothy Di Frasso. Carlos Barbe, vice consul for Uruguay, has almost paid for the sportiest, showiest car he could buy by renting it for pictures. ” ” ”

A bit of microphotography in “Each Dawn I Die” will show a flea wearing a paper dress. The studio denies that the Hays Office insisted on the costume. 2 2 ”

OR much of the action in “Stanley and Livingstone,” an . entire sound stage is occupied by

an African thatched village, com-

plete with scenic cyclorama. Complete, also, with dozens of shaven-

pated natives wearing huge rings

in the elongated lobes of their ears. Of course these ears are not really their own, but rubber ap-

STATE

HURRY! LAST DAY! 2

SMRSH [711.44

VOGUE

TUXEDO =“

blame the actors for those, but the bald heads are funnier. : The studio couldn’t persuade a single Negro to shave his head. It was a throwback to barbarism for which money was no recompense. So the makeup department had to get busy and fashion rubber caps which looked like bare scalps. On the way to the set, walking through a crowd of these players, I predicted that the picture probably would work in a number by the Hall Johnson choir, It was wasted sarcasm. The first scene shot was one in which Dr. Livingstone led his dusky converts in a spirited singing of “Onward Christian Soldiers.” The savages really went to town on it, too, with revivalist fervor, trained harmony, perfect enunciation and all the verses. Most of them were Hall Johnson singers. 2 2 ” Greta Garbo and Leopold Stoiowski hava been getting around town lately, mostly in a squeaky, creaky, cheap old roadster, ” 2 2

Speaking of troubles and directorial changes, the Dead End Kids are probably the only players who ever tossed a director off a picture. E. A. Dupont was too meticulous about certain scenes for “Hell’s Kitchen”; did them over and over until the youngsters became sullen and then rebellious. Somebody pushed somebody, somebody took a swing, and then Huntz Hall bopped Mr. Dupont in the nose. Two days later he was relieved of the assignment.

” ” Metro plans some horror pictures under Tod Browning, who directed Lon Chaney. Henry Hull is being groomed as the new

relived the past. Another suitor whose life was changed by unrequited love for

Christine is the priest, Father Dominicus, formerly a gifted composer. The handsome Alpine guide has survived beautifully; in fact, he is almost the answer to Christine's search when a call for help sends him scurrying toward an avalanche and out of her life. Then, in a richly humorous scene, Christine finds another dance partner as the pompous mayor of a small town. Laziness had killed his ambition, but not his sense of importance. The scene in which he marries himself to his cook then reads an. “impromptu” speech of horribly conceited self-congratula-tion is a gem.

Finds Doctor in Squalid Home

In violent contrast is the sequence in which Christine finds the broken doctor,’ practicing illegal surgery in a squalid waterfront apartment. Their scene together, the doctor’s epileptic attack and his subsequent murder of his shrewish mistress is stark and brutal, yet done with remarkable subtlety and restraint. Christine’s final disenchantment comes with her visit to her home

ILL

Last Day! JESSE JAMES” in . Technicolor & “St. Louis Blues” STARTING TOMORROW redric March—Joan Benne! Ralph Bellamy—Ann Sothern “TRADE WINDS”

Jack Holt “Strange Case Dr. Meade”

Last Day! “Mr, Moto’s Last Warning’”’ & Glenda Farrell “Torchy Blane in Chinatown* *“Flying -Men”’—News STARTING TOMORROW + ene Autry—Smiley Burnette “MEXICALI ROSE”

bogey-man,

H. Bogart “King of Underworld” Chap. 7 “Lone Rang r Rides Again”

WEST SIDE

2702 W, 10th S ae Gariield - e an “ ‘FOUR DAUGHTERS” stats HOLLYWOOD STADIUM MYSTERY”

SOUTH SIDE 2203 Shelby St.

New Garfield Jeanette MacDonalé

Nelson Edd,

“SWEETHEARTS”

Also “YOUNG FUGITIVES”

NORTH SIDE

College at 63d Louis Payward ontaine “DUKE OF WEST POINT” Claudette Colbert SPAZAY

CINEMA “Wa. dame

“PERSONAL SECRETARY"

Claudette Colbert “ZAZA”

EAST SIDE :

EAST SIDE ? 3155 E. 10th 1. RIVOLI Bie 6. 15¢ Jane Withers—Leo Carrillo “ARIZONA WILDCAT” Paul Lucas “THE LADY VANISHES” (Directed by Alfred Hitchcock, One of World’s Greatest Directors) Extra! The Three Stooges LADIES! Special Matinee Tomorrow! 3rd—Final Rivoli-Spry Cooking School Tomorrow at 1:15—Doors Open 12:30 Special Feature—Admission, . 25¢

3 t O’Brien oan Blondell “OFF THE RECORD” MR. MOTO’S LAST WARNING”

Lr. \e TSE Ti) Jeanette MacDonald—Nelson Eddy

“SWEETHEARTS”

Plus Chas. Quigley “CONVICTED”

EMERSON “Eggs” 15¢|

Despite the cast’s excellent performance, the picture is memorable as an illustration of the use to which photography may be put in the visual suggestion of mood and emotion. It becomes eloquent; in fact, M. Duvivier makes the camera another actor. : In providing such noval and interesting slants on a familiar medium as are found in “Un Carnet de Bal,” the Filmarte Guild is serving an excellent purpose. J.T.)

DOUG GIVEN AWARD

HOLLYWOOD, March 30 (U. P.). —Douglas Fairbanks Jr. possesses a bronze plaque awarded to him by the New York University’s motion picture class as “the outstanding romantic character star of 1938.”

Last Day! “Stagecoach”—"“Flirting With Fate”

ONCE TOO TALL

Joel McCrea was once let go by a major studio because he was “too tall to be a leading man.” He is 6 feet 2%: inches. TONIGHT 8:30

ENGLIS —Also—

FRI. & SAT. NIGHTS—MAT. SAT. |

| Eves. $1.10 to $3.30 EE

. Mat. $2.75 Incl. Tax WORLD PREMIERE

1 Laurence Olivier—Margalo Gillmore

v TOMORROW a

Sure | believe you . . . she called you sugar because you never met her before!

You'll Cheer

THESE CO-EDS OF THE CLINIC!

in Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's

FASTAND LOOSE

Sequel to "Fast Company”

REGINALD RALPH OWEN + MORGAN _

with FLORENCE RICE UNA MERKEL ANN RUTHERFORD MARY HOWARD ALAN MARSHAL BUDDY EBSEN

TLLLLE m

4020 E. New York Geo. Raft

E. Wash. St.

NEU NEI

STA:

| PR PREL LIAS EC! THR

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|PLUS—“KING OF CHINATOWN” wit