Daily News from Los Angeles, California • 25
- Publication:
- Daily Newsi
- Location:
- Los Angeles, California
- Issue Date:
- Page:
- 25
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Virginia Wright Drama Editor It has taken criticism from abroad and a drop in the national market to put the motion picture industry in the mood for self-appraisal. One of the troubles, as Jules Dassin sees it, is "Hollywood's refusal to learn the lessons before its eyes." The director points specifically to the technique of the documentary--another term for honest reporting -which won a world audience during the war, and which, if pursued, can raise the level of Hollywood's product to the point where foreign competition will cease to be a threat. Dassin expressed his views before the Screen Writers Guild Special Program committee meeting last month, and re-emphasized them the other day on the set of "Brute Force" which he is directing for Mark Hellinger Productions. "I am ashamed of some of the things I was jockeyed into making while bound to a contract," he admitted, and now that he is free Dassin is determined to fight for honesty on the screen. By this he doesn't rule out comedy or melodrama or light musicals.
Every type of entertainment has its place, but even within a light frame he wants to see human beings portrayed as such, and not as glamorized stereotypes. Dassin puts his faith in the few creative minded producers in Hollywood, and in the creators themselves, the writers and directors. "We can't look to the front office for leadership, but to screenwriters who must give us the stuff of reality, and to directors who by casting and handling of the material will create an honest picture." On Dassin's first post-MGM assignment he is putting his theories into practice. "Brute Force" is violent melodrama, but the characters created by Robert Patterson and screenwriter Richard Brooks, are real people, he feels. "And Hellinger has been wonderful about the casting.
Many of the players aren't well known, but they're exactly right for the parts, and they're being photographed realistically. With Burt Lancaster, Hume Cronyn and Charles Bickford starred, Dassin has drawn a good many of his, supporting players from the Actors' Lab. "Not because the Lab people are particular friends of mine." he explains, "but because I think the best actors around are with the Lab." Roman Bohnen, chairman of the Lab board, plays the warden; Whitner Bissell, featured recently in one of the Lab's one acts directed by Dassin, (and the Scot in the Biltmore production of "The Hasty has an important selfsacrificing role; Howard Duff, a young actor who worked under Dassin in another Lab play, makes his screen debut; Art Smith, veteran of the Group Theater and one of the mainstays of the Lab, plays the prison doctor; James O'Rear, Jeff Corey and Sam Levene, are among the others. The women in the picture are Ann Blyth, Ella Raines, Yvonne de Carlo and Anita Colby, who appear in flashback sequences. feeling about honesty of characterization is reflected in his handling of extras.
His work with 500 of them in the prison riot scene last week was typical. Because the guild couldn't supply the necessary numbers men were recruited from unemployment agencies. Some of them knew nothing about the making of motion pictures, but the usual method is to turn them over to an assistant director for quick instruction. Dassin doesn't work that way. In his exceedingly quiet voice he asked for "quiet" over the microphone.
Then, treating the assembled "prisoners" as intelligent, human beings, he proceeded to give them the background of the story, and took time to read long passages of the script. When he was through every man knew not only what he was to do, but why. The director has a habit, too, of asking none of the players to do anything he wouldn't do. When Cronyn, playing the hated head guard, agreed to take a 14-foot fall from the prison tower (instead of using a stunt man) Dassin insisted upon trying it first to see if it was safe. It was.
Possibly, the young director's feeling for actors goes back to his own beginnings in the theater. He first made up his mind to be an actor when he saw the being done by: a Yiddish theater in New York. He went around to inquire how he could become a part of it. "Do you understand Yiddish?" the management wanted to know. "No, but I can learn," the boy (Continued on Page 29, Col.
1) Daily News 25. LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA WEDNESDAY, APRIL 1. 1947 Frank Eng A TOUGH GUY AND HIS STOOGE--John Kellog plays underworld stooge to Dick Powell, hardboiled gambler in "Johnny O'Clock," today, Orpheum, Belmont, El Rey, Apollo, Million Dollar. LOVE ON THE PLAINS-John Wayne and Gail Russell are romantic couple in "Angel and the western adventure story with new twist, which bows tomorrow at both Paramount Theaters. Film review Am a Fugitive' By MARIE MESMER proves on the screen that no matter how lowly a man's beginning he may reach acclaim with fortitude plus, in this particular instance, the use of hypnotism.
Mexico's comedian in "Soy Un (I Am a favorite, Fugitive) plays the typical role of the down and outer who starts life as a bank janitor. evening, after the bank is closed, he discards his chores to take over the president's chair and tackle imaginary high finance over the telephone. He turns down offers of a million dollar profit with the mere shrug of a shoulder, as only this actor cando it. When he strays from pantomime into excessive dialogue, which this film has, he loses effect. Unhampered.
by script, he is his funniest and best. The bank is blown up one night by hoodlums and the mite of a man is jailed because his pet parrot, repeats the word "dynamite." The parrot caught the word when the would-beworld-beater explained one evening to his sidekick the terrific effect of the atomic. He escapes from jail, however, and is picked up by a gangster's moll who strangely believes the man is a tough hombre in spite of the dangling trousers and hat resembling an abstract symbol in a Dali painting. She, blond and scintillating, is assigned to find out the wizardry of his art as a safecracker. They "samba" beautifully together and Cantinflas, in order to encourage a budding romance, bluffs by telling her he is a hypnotist.
With this newly given power, which really works for him, he is able to clear himself of the crime and emerge a hero. Emilia Guiu as the vixen, who leads Cantinflas astray, is a new type of heroine on the Mexican screen. Usually the actresses are brunets. Miss Guiu, a platinum blond with upsweep hair-do, blue eyed and stacked in the right places, succeeded in getting a "GI whistle" from the masculine gender. Overheard was "muy linda" Chock full of tomfoolery, the film should pack the California and Mason and the Roosevelt theater, which the management has engaged to please the increasing Cantinflas fans.
The photography is the best seen here in recent weeks, the sets have polish and the production as a whole is tiptop. DISTRESS--Madge Meredith comes to the aid of wounded Robert Ryan, when outlaws attack town in "Trail Street," western drama beginning first run Friday at Pantages and Hillstreet Theaters. BLITZ HERO -Brian Aherne portrays a psychiatrist on war duty during the London blitz in this scene with beautiful Laraine Day in "The Locket," which moves today to the Four Star Theater. Creighton Peet NEW YORK, April -George Abbott has been raiding the nursery again, and come up with a new collegiate musical, "Barefoot Boy With Cheek," a gay, noisy and generally satisfactory evening. As usual, Abbott has collected singers and dancers full of charm and bounce- sometimes their vitality fairly seems to lift the roof.
The story is from a book by Max Shulman, whose humor seems to be quite as collegiate as the cast, as can be gauged from the fact that it all takes place in the Alpha Cholera House, where Shyster Fiscal is the treasurer, and Asa Hearthrug the young hero. He is pursued by a comic Communist, Yetta Samovar, and so it goesone funny name after another. A nice-looking lad sitting next to me thought all this convulsively funny, and once beat me on the back, mistaking me for some character born 20 years later. Nancy Walker does some nice bits of clowning, and Billy Redfield, the boy, is pleasant and engaging. All all, "Barefoot Boy With Cheek" is a smooth, fast show, as much like all other collegiate musicals as one car is like the others on the same assembly line.
But, even without any distinction, it fills a place on Broadway. After all, not all those who wart to can see "Annie Get Your Gun" every night. A few years ago a little comedy like "Tenting Tonight," which is about the efforts of some veterans to coax a chemistry professor and his wife into letting them move in with them so that they can go to college, might have been a big success. But, despite the fact that Frank Gould's lines are bright and amusing, and his characterizations sufficient to serve, his play will have a hard time on Broadway. It's the kind of adequate Grade item you pick up in a neighborhood house for 40 cents with a famous well-developed blonde, and a famous muscular lad doing the work.
And if you wait another six weeks till prices really come down, you will probably get start on a set of dishes again, just like the old days. To get back to "Tenting Tonight," it has Jean Muir, a lovely asset to any stage, and Dean Harens and Michael Road, also both known in the film studios. Benedict Bogeaus' (and the Cagneys) sale of General Service studios to James Nasser of the northern theater-chain interests will entail a minimum of realignment, according to word from that lot. Bogeaus, apparently, will merely duck out of the studio operations end to concentrate on picture-making, while Nasser will step in, with intent to make a few himself. The former has sewed up more than enough shooting space for his productions to be.
Right now, the first to go (about June 15) will be an Ida Lupino vehicle--and not the previously announced "The Queen's Necklace." Bogeaus has just acquired Louis Bromfield's romantic drama of Boston aristocracy, "Early Autumn," a Pulitzer prize-winning novel; which will be given priority. United Artists, which has its offices on the lot, will remain there as will the seven production units releasing through UA: Golden Productions, Hunt Stromberg, Bischoff, Charles R. Rogers, Hopalong Cassidy Productions, the Cagneys and Bogeaus. Bogeaus bought the lot back in 1939 or SO for a reported $450,000 at the time. The current purchase price has been announced as $2,500,000.
When the Cagneys bought into the lot last fall and moved over from Goldwyn studios, the money was used to remodel an old stage into a pair of small soundstages. The lot's present seven soundstages can accommodate three pictures provided they aren't too ambitious in scope of production. Nasser plans to put $500,000 into completion of a skeleton stage 100 by 150 feet, and for remodeling purposes. The recently completed Stromberg film with Lucille Ball and George Sanders, "Personal Column," was originally a Nasser property and knocked around on that lot for' some time before it was put on celluloid by the pair. While on the subject of that lot we may as well pass on the good word that Bea Lillie is set to play a key role, right up her alley, in Golden's "Texas, Heaven and Brooklyn," formerly "Eddie and the Archangel Mike." The darling of the plushier salons will bring her dry-ice wit to bear on the Barry Benefield' story about a jerkwater town copyreader (in Texas, of course) who "leaves for New York, only to wind up in Brooklyn." Although a July starting date has been set, neither director nor romantic leads have been named to date.
Miss Lillie's role will be that of a "reformed pickpocket," who belongs to "an aristocratic southern family." Incidentally, the fantasy is being exorcised from the original by scripter Lewis Meltzerno doubt because that theme has only been used by about a dozen other producers in the last season or two. one of two. Thomas Wolfe plays, and announced last summer by producer Rudolph Joseph, will get a fall production locally and will have John Ireland in the leading role. Depicting the rise and fall of an aristocratic southern family during the Civil War period, the three-acter has been edited slightly by Joseph, Considerable interest was evinced both locally and in New York at the initial announcement, and depending on availability of a showcase, Joseph may just take the production to Broadway. It will be a world premiere.
With the studio beating the drums mightily on sneak preview reactions to "The Hucksters," Clark Gable will return from his four month between pictures hiatus to go into the Kingsley original, "Homecoming of created as a vehicle for Clark's manly talents. Paul Osborn (who adapted "The Yearling') is working on the screenplay and Sidney Franklin will produce. Jack Conway is mentioned as a likely candidate for the directorial post, and a September starting date is tentatively set. Gable will play an ex-Army surgeon who faces postwar problems of readjustment--ineluding some romantic type. Some people are so enthusiastic over "The Hucksters" that they believe a re-teaming of Deborah Kerr is inevitable, or at least plausible.
Our colleague on this page, Marie Mesmer, says the composing room did away with that part of a recent review that lauded youthful crooner Bill Lawrence when he sang on the Million Dollar stage. And now the young Sinatra has won him(Continued on Page 28, Col. 4) COMEDY PLAY--Nancy Conover plays one of the important roles in Patterson Greene's "Papa Is All," which inaugurated run last night at El Patio Theater. Stage review will appear tomorrow. Music review By MILDRED NORTON Brazil's red-headed songbird, into a few inches, and also packs the notes she sends across the Both were well to the fore at last night's recital in Philharmonic Auditorium, where she appeared as part of the current season's Behymer artist series.
The Philharmonic is infinitely better suited to her voice and style than the huge Shrine, in which she battled vainly last fall to make her tones carry past the 15th row during the San Francisco Opera season. For its own part, her voice now appears to be in much better condition than it was then. There is greater steadiness in her tones, and the signs of fatigue evident at her earlier appearance have disappeared. Last night her singing recaptured the brightness, the winsome humor and the tenderness which we have found in it in times past. These qualities go far to reinforce 8 voice which was not designed for vocal tours de force, but they are of less significance than the musical intelligence which shapes her repertoire and its delivery into contours that enhance the good Bidu Sayao, packs a lot of charm a goodly amount of artistry into footlights.
points while minimizing the weaker ones. Her Mozart, represented by "Voi che sapete" and "Non 80 piu" from "The Marriage of Figaro," was agreeably disciplined, never forced, and phrased with purity. Among her attributes, also, are a melting pianissimo and 8 flexible imagination which make her singing of Debussy and Faure almost first rate. That it is not entirely so is due to the slight over-sweetness which pervades much of her singing and which would seem to be more a matter of temperament than of interpretation. Her choice of Donizetti's "I faut partir" as her operatic excerpt was a happy one, and she sang it with tenderness and restraint.
I could not share the audience's enthusiasm for her group of modern songs in English, but five Brazilian folk songs, sung in their native dialeets, made a unique and rather impressive conclusion to the program..
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