The Year Was 1938 – May 25th

Boris Morros in 1938

• Boris Morros, musical director at Paramount has been made an officer of the French Legion in recognition of his work in behalf of the music of France. [This item bears more scrutiny. I have run across his name repeatedly in my research into this era. I was aware of his position at Paramount (he hired composers and conductors on a film by film basis). And Paramount was not his only master – for he played the same role for Walter Wanger films – ‘Blockade’ for this year, and ‘Stagecoach’ for 1939. He must have had a special agreement with Paramount. And the mention of the French honor seems strange, as he was Russian, and as of 1934 had been enlisted as a Soviet spy, and was actively in contact with a handler from 1936 on – until 1947 when he became a counterspy for the FBI. A movie based on him was made in 1960 ‘Man on a String’].
• The Senate of the US passes an anti-block booking bill that will change the way film companies do business, if it also passes the House. Though the latter is not likely for the moment, with the remake of Congress after the elections, things could change.
• (This led in 1940, to the gov’t opening up an investigation into the practice, which eventually led to legislation against block booking and studios owning theaters).
• Selznick is pairing Carole Lombard with Jimmy Stewart for “Made for Each Other.”
• Joe Penner, vaudeville and radio comedian has been signed to headline on an RKO film scheduled for the fall football season. “Mr Doodle Kicks Off” will include Lucille Ball as his college sweetheart. Production to commence in June. [Lucille Ball must have had something else to do, because June Travis took the female lead in this opus. Penner has one film for 1939 – ‘The Day the Bookies Wept’].
• Yip Harburg and Harold Arlen have finished the first song for ‘The Wizard of Oz’ – The Jitterbug, Judy Garland will sing the tune. [The number was filmed, but left off of the final version, the running time being the main consideration].
• Going before the cameras today at Paramount – ‘Bulldog Drummond in Africa.’ John Barrymore was to have played one of the roles, but was replaced by H B Warner. Barrymore was tied up in ‘Spawn of the North,’ and was slated for the upcoming ‘Zaza.’
• Harold Lloyd putting on a private exhibition of his water colors. [The film comedian had only the one film this year – ‘Professor Beware,’ and nothing for 1939. In fact nothing at all until 1947].
• Clark Gable’s stand-in Lew Smith given his first speaking role by Metro. [For this speaking role I could not locate what film it was for at MGM, but he is listed as Gable’s stunt double for Gone with the Wind].
• Henry Fonda presented with birthday pipes by James Stewart and Chico Marx. (See May 19^th, for mention about his May 16^th birthday).

ON THE MOVE

• George Stevens back from a hunting tour in New Mexico. [On a prior date I knew he was looking in Mexico for location to shoot ‘Gunga Din.’ Perhaps he was mixing pleasure with business].
• James Cagney due back from Martha’s Vineyard in June for work at WB in ‘Angels with Dirty Faces.’

ITEMS OF INTEREST

• Early silent film star Maurice Costello has sued for maintenance from his daughter, Dolores Costello, a later silent film star, (and was probably a bigger name than his, having the sobriquet “The Goddess of the Silent Screen,” and having been the wife at one time to John Barrymore). She had been paying him $200 per month for ten years, but since she had been paying the medical bills for her ailing sister for almost two years, she could no longer afford to carry him at that rate.

• Bibles have been placed in dressing rooms at all major studios by the Gideons.
• Ed Sullivan writes about ‘The Coolest Sets in Town” – the ice rink at 20^th Century Fox where Sonja Henie is making ‘My Lucky Star.’ (See May 9^th and May 18^th). The one constructed at Paramount for ’Spawn of the North’ – a stream in Alaska, beside which a grip had the enviable job of sitting by the tank and paddling the water so that the water will glimmer in the lights – George Raft and Dorothy Lamour in their heavy parkas would gladly exchange places with him. And the snowstorm scene on a stage at RKO on the film ‘Ground Crew,’ in which the star Richard Dix forgets the reality and tosses a cigarette only to ignite the ‘cotton snow.’ [‘Ground Crew’ was released as ‘Sky Giant’].

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The Year Was 1938 – May 19th

Virginia Weidler in 1938

• Today child actor Virginia Weidler was added to the RKO production ‘Mother Carey’s Chickens.’ She was borrowed from MGM where she was at work in ‘Too Hot to Handle.’ She is also currently loaned out to Paramount on ‘Men with Wings.’
• United Artists board to meet today to finalize the releasing deal with Hal Roach. Roach can bring his own production money. Dr A H Gianninni, president of UA prepared the way for him. Mary Pickford to attend the meeting also.
• Independent exihibitors at a confab in Pittsburgh have asked the government to do an investigation into the picture industry, especially pricing policies and terms of film leasing, all to be included in any anti-trust action that is pending in Washington.
• Silent film actress Alla Nazimova has been brought into Paramount to help tutor the Italian actress Isa Miranda. Producer Albert Lewis and director George Cukor brought Nazimova in to help Miranda recreate a role that Nazimova played on the Russian stage 37 years prior. [The film was released in 1938 – but not with Isa Miranda. Claudette Colbert took the role instead. I wonder what happened].

Columnist Sidney Skolsky often wrote about “Watching Them Make Pictures” for this week he details three happenings:

• On the MGM backlot, Jack Conway was directing Clark Gable and Walter Pidgeon in a scene for ‘Too Hot to Handle.’ Playing competing newsreelmen Pidgeon was to chase Gable and Gable was to trip and fall face first into a mud puddle especially prepared for him. He fell into the mud perfectly – but Pidgeon blew his line, so they had to do it all over again.
• Out on the movie ranch in the Valley, Richard Thorpe was shooting a scene for “Give and Take” with Robert Taylor and Maureen O’Sullivan. A man was plowing in the far background and was whistling. The sound man warned the director that his mic was picking up this whistling. Thorpe said to just keep it as background – but then the sound man broke in again and told him that they would not be able to use it as the man was whistling “Thanks for the Memory,” a Paramount song. [The film was released as ‘The Crowd Roars’].
• He checked in at Paramount and entered a sound stage where “The Spawn of the North” was being shot. Business was on hold for the moment, for they were celebrating Henry Fonda’s birthday (May 16^th). Fonda was serving out the cake when two Western Union messengers arrived and sang Happy Birthday to Fonda. They had been sent by his former roommates John Swope and James Stewart. Before he knew it Fonda had handed out all the pieces, not having reserved one for himself. One of the visitors surrendered his piece to Hank. Soon, director Henry Hathaway had Fonda, Dorothy Lamour, Louise Platt and George Raft back to work.

ITEMS OF INTEREST

• Ed Sullivan in his column extolls a list of names you were never meant to see in the credits. Claire Meyers – Sally Sage – Marjorie Lane – Eadie Adams – Virginia Verrill. The legs of Meyers, or more properly Myers, stood in for closeups of those of Joan Crawford, Virgina Bruce and other ladies in the MGM stable. Sage’s hands stood in for those of Bette Davis in ‘Jezebel.’ [She had uncredited parts in six WB films for 1939]. The last three lent their voices for songs that came from the lips of, respectively, Eleanor Powell for ‘Broadway Melody of 1936,’  ‘Born to Dance,’ ‘Rosalie,’ as well as ‘Broadway Melody of 1938’; for Jean Harlow in ’Suzy’ and ‘Reckless’; and for Andrea Leeds in ‘The Goldwyn Follies.’

Spokane, Expo ’74 and Henry Fonda

Sometime in the summer of 1974 we took a little roadtrip. My wife and I packed up the Roadrunner and headed east. We stopped down in Renton and borrowed her parents’ camper trailer and hitched it to our car with the black racing stripes.

Before hitting I-90, we picked up my sister and her fiance to take them along for the trip. Our destination was Spokane and Expo ’74 which had opened three months prior. We sped along at the 55 mph speed limit set after the fuel crisis precipitated by problems in the Middle East the year before. We did not go into Spokane the first day, but set up the tent at a wooded campground somewhere west of the city.

The next day we left the camper trailer set up on its site and took the Roadrunner into town unencumbered. The fair had been built right in the center of Spokane along the Spokane River, on land reclaimed from blighted industrial and railroad properties. One of the sights was a clock tower left standing when the rest of the Great Northern railroad station was taken down. We spent the day walking the grounds or in the skyrides, seeing the sights. One of the skyrides went over the river falls and underneath the Monroe Street bridge, the same street that was the bete noir of my childhood when my family lived in Spokane.

The US pavilion had an IMAX theater which ran a film entitled “Man Belongs to the Earth.” This was in keeping with the stated purpose of the Expo, a focus on the environment. Chief Dan George narrated and appeared in it.

Of all the exhibits, I was most intrigued by the one offered by the Czechs which, oddly enough, was housed within the Washington State pavilion. Called Kino-Automat, its small auditorium was rigged for audience participation. Each viewer had access to two buttons. At a half dozen points in the film “One Man and His World,” you were given the opportunity to decide between two options as to what would happen next. The vote was tallied live on the screen before it continued on its way. A good thing it was a comedy.

We returned to the tent camper for dinner and to prepare for the evening event. We had tickets for the Spokane opera house, the largest venue in the Washington State pavilion. On its stage that night we saw Henry Fonda in the one man show Clarence Darrow. Our seats were in the balcony; so we had a fine, but distant view of chairs, a rumpled suit, a necktie and suspenders. And a very recognizable voice. The fact that it was a monologue did not help my attention span. It had been a long and tiring day, so at points I nodded off. We were soon to get a closer view.

When the curtain dropped, we gathered together and picked up the Roadrunner in the adjoining parking garage. At the moment we emerged down the exit onto the street, we almost ran into a passing limousine. We realized at once that Henry Fonda was sitting in the back seat of the limo. He leaned forward and stared out at us. We returned the favor, sped up and took this shot.

Thus ended our memorable day at the fair.

Fireflies and Ticonderoga

First you placed two chairs, preferably wooden with high backs, some three to five feet apart, and then stretched between them a blanket or a sheet that you could either secure to the chair seats, or if big enough pull them out as wings forming a larger structure. And thus you had a fort. And there, especially on rainy days, with your toys about you, you entered the joy of an imaginary realm.

But what was better was visiting an actual fort.  

One summer day, Dad loaded us up in the car and we set out westward to Cambridge in Northern New York. My Mom wanted to visit an old classmate from her hometown of Colville, who now lived there with her family.  I remember two things about our stay there. I was fascinated to meet my Mom’s friend, because she told us all ahead of time that her friend had been born a Hanks, the same family related to Abraham Lincoln’s mother. I was a little awed. It was strange to realize that here was someone in the present connected to someone from the past that I had heard about in school.

The other – was my first sighting of fireflies. In the cool of the evening they flitted among the trees at the back of their property.  It was eerie to see them as they moved. Their luminiscence blinking on and off in a totally random fashion, but somehow in a left-hand kind of way revealing an intricate pattern, a choreography of dots to which your mind’s eye supplied the lines.

From there it was on through the countryside and towns named after falls – (but no Bedford Falls and no Jimmy “George Bailey” Stewart), up to Fort Ticonderoga, a stone edifice alongside Lake Champlain. Originally built by the French, it fell to the British in 1759, and to the Americans in 1775.  On this latter occasion its cannons were transferred to Dorchester Heights and were instrumental in breaking the British seige of Boston.

Standing inside, it was difficult to see the beauty of its design. Being limited to the two dimensions of Flatland, you needed to be lifted up to a point above to see the star like configuration. The map helped in that regard. But the mind wandered to other things, like the view from the walls outward from the fort – and in the mind’s eye seeing Hank Fonda (Jimmy Stewart’s good friend) slipping out of a beseiged fort to go for help in the film Drums Along the Mohawk. An imaginary realm you could reach out and touch.