Marie Dressler In the 30's
I'm generally posting the blog a little later than usual because I'm keeping my nose to the Electoral College map. I should return to normal in about a week.
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11/23/1933 HCN Elizabeth Yeaman
Out of the 30 winners in the Paramount Search For Beauty contest, six have been retained on long-term contracts. The other 24 will leave shortly for their homes in faraway lands, as the picture has been completed. Gwenilian Gill of Edinburg, Scotland, won the $1,000 bonus for the best performance given by the girls. She is just 17, and has been offered a term contract, but first has to obtain permission from her Scotch father to remain in Hollywood. Clara Lou Sheridan of Dallas, Tex., is the other girl who won a term contract. Dallas, in fact, has two contract winners. The other one is Alfred Delcambre. He remains here on contract. However, Edrod Tidbury of Johannesburg, British South Africa, won the boy's bonus of $1,000 for the best performance. He remained on contract, too. Julian Madison of Minneapolis and Colin Tapley of Dunedin, New Zealand, are the other two that have been retained with contracts. Paramount believes that all of these six newcomers show promise of real screen careers.
Ordinarily, winners of film contests appear once and are not seen again. But remember that there are still three Panther Women winners under contract at Paramount and working regularly. And the Lion Man, Buster Crabbe, is still going strong. So perhaps these six new winners may really amount to something.
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Ever since Cavalcade, Winfield Sheehan has shown a particular fondness for English players. One of his newest imports is Pat Paterson, a musical comedy star....Miss Paterson seems to be the choice for the feminine lead in Bottoms Up, a Buddy DeSylva musical film which was first mentioned for Lilian Harvey. Spencer Tracy and John Boles seem to be set for the male leads in this film.
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Gary Cooper's romance with Sandra Shaw is keeping him in New York at the moment, but he is expected back in three weeks to settle some business affairs. For one thing, there is his Paramount contract to be settled. He has one more picture to make on his old contract, and he must also decide whether he will sign again with this company. He already has committed himself for one picture with Samuel Goldwyn, and now I hear that MGM is most anxious to obtain Gary for the co-starring lead with Marion Davies in Operator 13. This is the Robert W. Chambers story which will reach the screen as more or less of a musical. Walter Wanger will be the producer on the picture.
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Sarah Padden is having an opportunity to prove her versatility in the matter of characterizations and accents. At the moment, she is playing a featured role of the Polish mother in As the Earth Turns, at Warners. Before that she portrayed a Swede in Queen Christina, an Eskimo woman in Man of Two Worlds, with Francis Lederer at Radio Pictures, and a colored mammy in Ann Vickers at the same studio.
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Paramount admits that the reason Miriam Hopkins was given a leave of absence to star in "Jezebel" on the New York stage is that the studio holds the first option on the screen rights to the play. Paramount has been several jumps ahead of the other studios in grabbing the rights to new Broadway plays this year. And if "Jezebel" is a hit, you may look to see it transposed to the Paramount screen with Miss Hopkins in her original role. Tallulah Bankhead, first chosen for this role, is still ill in a hospital in New York.
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Newspaper stories are getting another revival on the screen. I learned today that Woman and the Law, a Fox picture now in production, is a newspaper story. This fact leaked out when Robert McWade was cast as the city editor. Jimmy Dunn and Claire Trevor have the leads, but Jimmy is not to be seen as the reporter. I believe it is Miss Trevor who does the reporting in this film.
And Above Timberline, the new Gene Fowler story recently announced for production at MGM also is a newspaper story. It is the original idea proposed sometime ago for a story based on the lives of Tammen and Bonfils of the Denver Post. This should be quite a thrilling melodrama.
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George Raft has had his option picked up several months ahead of time at Paramount. When he starts to work on his next picture it will be with a nice boost in salary. And from now on Raft will be a star officially. I imagine most people thought he already was a star. But he doesn't actually get the star crown until his next picture.
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Paul Perez, Fox writer, has been given a three month leave of absence and sails on Saturday aboard a freighter for Europe. He will spend a month in England visiting his son who is in school there.
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Signed by 66 members of the Citizens Conservation Corps camped near Saugus, Calif., Mae West received one of the most unique invitations of her career here today. The letter was written to her by C.R. Engel, and bore the signatures of the rest of the men in the camp. "In fact, 200 men have lost all sense of direction and have completely gone West," wrote the C.C.C. boys. "One location," they added, "is 10 miles north of Castiac on the new Ridge Road. So you must come up sometime–soon."
Marie Dressler In the 30's
ABBREVIATIONS
EE – Los Angeles Evening Express
EH -- Los Angeles Evening Herald
EHE -- Los Angeles Evening Herald Express
FD – Film Daily
HCN -- Hollywood Citizen News
HDC -- Hollywood Daily Citizen
LAR -- Los Angeles Record
LAPR -- Los Angeles Post-Record
LAX -- Los Angeles Examiner
MPH – Motion Picture Herald
10/7/1929 EH MARIE'S SUCCESSFUL IN TALKIES, REPORT
Marie Dressler, who is essaying a featured comedy characterization opposite the popular Rudy Vallee in his first sound production, The Beloved Vagabond, is finding even greater fame as a featured comedienne in dialogue pictures than she experienced as the leading comedy star of the early silent films, it is reported.
10/22/1929 EH Scouting the Sinema
By Dorothy Herzog
QUEEN MOTHER
When John Considine Jr. received the telegram that notified him Marie Dressler could and would play the queen mother in The Swan, he and director Paul Stein were that delighted.
This outloud, which will bring Lillian Gish back to the silver sheet, boasts quite a sterling cast: Marie, Miss Gish, Conrad Nagel, Rod LaRocque and O.P. Heggie.
Mr. Heggie has been brought from New York especially to portray the reverend father part. Production gets under way today at the United Artists' studio.
1/3/1930 HDC Doris Denbo
Margin Mags, the Marie Dressler-Polly Moran comedy which they are working on out there at MGM will have the inimitable T. Roy Barnes. He will play the role of "Mr. Kidd," a typical tenant of the boarding house run by the buxom and talented Marie, a sheik at night but just a floor-walker in the day-time. Marie has won a right to stardom with her unprecedented popular since her recent screen appearances. Even n Anna Christie, the Greta Garbo masterpiece of construction and acting, she has been said on several occasions to steal even this picture. Marie is an actress at heart and be it straight character role or broad comedy, she handles it with it with a master hand.
1/4/1930 HDC Doris Denbo
Marie Dressler and Polly Moran are going to be co-featured in a production at MGM soon. The success of Dangerous Females co-starring those two, caused MGM officials to decide to make a feature co-starring them. No details of this production have been given and I cannot seem to get any except that everyone knows it will be crammed with laughs whether they are written into the script or not. Just give these fine old troupers any comedy situation and watch the laughs roll in.
1/8/1930 LAX Louella O. Parsons
Marie Dressler recovering from her recent illness on her way to Santa Barbara.
1/9/1930 EH Scouting the Sinema by Dorothy Herzog
Polly Moran and Marie Dressler begin work soon in a new double star yarn for MGM. This time they'll be rival boarding house keepers in New York.
Polly invests in the stock market and cashes in. She advises Marie to do likewise. Which Marie does and loses the family shirt. Whereupon the rumpus commences and continues until they get together drinking through the rye. No matter what flick those two are in, the nearest box office can have my money--both nickels.
1/15/1930 LAX Louella O. Parsons
I can guarantee there will be a laugh in this film. Marie Dressler and her side kick, Polly Moran, are to be starred in a feature with the stock market as a background. They play two scrub women who get rich suddenly. Can't you just see those two women! I suppose we will then have an inside glimpse of the terrible crash in the market and the aftermath and its effect on the people who speculated. The story is an original by Willard Mack and Chuck Reisner is the director. If this picture isn't funny, I am going to say all hope is lost.
1/22/1930 HDC Doris Denbo
Marie Dressler and Polly Moran are going to make another hilarious laugh fest and this time it has to do with the recent stock market debacle in Wall Street. Willard Mack has written the story which is to guarantee its value. Charles Reisner will direct. This should be an almost perfect combination for entertainment of the best sort.
1/23/1930 IDN Anna Christie
By Eleanor Barnes
The sphinx-like silence of Greta Garbo has been broken in the stark lines of Anna Christie, which was presented at the Fox Criterion yesterday.
Garbo, whose strange, exotic personality has fascinated countless thousands of picture fans, as one might expect, easily triumphed over diction and emerged still the mysterious tragedienne of filmdom.
A long line of fans were at the Criterion early to get a glimpse of Anna Christie.
They came away realizing that behind those haunted eyes there was a compelling charm that that perfectly fitted the bowed figure of O'Neill's heroine.
NOT SO
Those who have seen Anna Christie in its past versions may feel that the Garbo interpretation will not sustain their interest, or justify a repetition of the tale.
But the spirit in which Garbo and Clarence Brown, her director, have approached the piece, give it new vitality and emphasize the vigor of the character.
The irrelevancies of the "old dabil the sea" in treatment of its followers pound a mighty lesson home–dreams, loves, lust–all lightly treated by the powerful elements. O'Neill builds his plots that way–man's eternal struggle against fate, and his exaltation when temporary success triumphs.
The plot is well know to theatergoers who saw Pauline Lord in the title role on the stage and Blanche Sweet in the silent version on the screen.
POWERFUL
Garbo is amazing in the part. Keeping in mind her difficulty with the English language, and realizing the role calls for heavy dramatics, she has done a surprising piece of work.
The star's Swedish accent serves her in great stead, for she speaks slightly broken. Anna Christie had been relegated to the farm of her father's people out in the stark middle west regions, while he followed the sea.
Anna is met on her first visit to New York to see her father after 15 years of neglect. He had dreams of her being a fine, sweet girl. But Anna was ill, physically and mentally. She wanted a vacation from men.
EXALTED
The call of the ocean in her blood, the girl felt purified when she was free on her father's barge. Then love came in the form of a big, tough sailor, who segregated his women into two classes. Anna seemed decent, the sort he would marry.
Her affection, however, presented this–she would confess of her past–and it took soul scourging on the part of this brawny seafarer to admit that she would make a worthwhile wife.
The characters in this play are few, but colorful. Marie Dressler and George Marion, two of the mellowest and finest troupers in the business, do superb character work in their roles of Marthy, the hard-boiled old sweetheart of Chris, Anna's father.
The opening sequences between Marthy and her lover are packed with humor, pathos and understanding–this fellow Brown knows his characters–and their jaunt to a beer-joint on a farewell tour is one of the most amusing episodes seen in many moons. Both Marion and Miss Dressler do glorious work.
Charles Bickford, who has been dominating the downtown theaters lately by his work with Lenore Ulric and in Hell's Heroes, is cast as the Irishman fascinated by her Swedish girl. Bickford has a rich brogue and an easy swing to his acting and is convincingly cast.
Garbo's talking debut is a success.
1/23/1930 EE Anna Christie
By Monroe Lathrop
"That old sea devil" bewailed by Chris, the barge skipper, today tossed up on the shore the finest dramatic talking picture yet made.
Incomparably superior in not one but may ways is Clarence Brown's screen version of Anna Christie, which opened at the Criterion Theater this morning, revealing in its course Greta Garbo as the best emotional actress of the films since the late Jeanne Eagels.
This MGM production of Eugene O'Neill's best-known play, which sets a new mark for future serious plays to shoot at, will delight the dramatist's admirers no less than those who find pleasure in high grade character acting and direction.
Not only does the Scandinavian star rise to unexpected levels in her portrayal, but there are three other vivid characterizations that will be stamped deeply on the memory of all who see them. And not the least among the pleased should be the author of Anna Christie, whose work has never before exercised such interest and grip, thanks to the scope of the dramatic camera.
Fog scenes, waterfront views, a storm at sea are a few things that were absence from the confines of the stage version. In only one respect may O'Neill demur. The censor bogey has forced the makers of the picture to pull some of the verbal punch. The brutal candor of the original dialogue isn't there.
Even so, this drama of seafaring folk is salty with its bristling, rugged types and events. Miss Garbo is no longer the mute and languid lady of a romantic dream world. With the slightest accent which befits her role of a transplanted Scandinavian girl who conceals her sordid secret from a father and a sweetheart who think her unsullied, she depicts and sustains the character with gripping fidelity.
It is the more surprising because it is marked by a variety and skill we look for in players of long experience and training. When the play's crisis comes and she battles the sullen father and embittered sweetheart she rises to the violent emotion with true power.
Such true instinct and talent for character should not again be wasted on the trivial and shallow stuff that has branded Garbo as a mere type of personality.
If curiosity in her speaking debut was dominant in this play, interest soon spread out to the star's splendid support. Astonishment awaits those who see the comedienne Marie Dressler in her first serious role. As Marthy, the besotted creature of men's lust, she gives an unflaggingly fine performance, grim, poignant, pathetic.
And when Charles Bickford is hauled aboard as the castaway the play blazes up never to die down in the fire of his ardor for Anna and anger when he learns the truth about her. It is the best work to date of this potential star. From his rich Irish brogue to his storms of passion it is rich with detail and the perfection of brawny character painting.
George Marion is a fixture with Anna Christie. Well remembered is his work as the weak, vacillating skipper, Chris, on the stage and again in the silent-picture version, now the ripeness of his talent comes into full flower. It isn't easy to imagine anyone else in the part.
Behind all these elements of a great cast, it is not to be overlooked, is the skilled hand of the director, Clarence Brown, holding its characters within the line, building up the situations. Exceptional plays don't just happen. They are created by a hand balancing its factors and co-ordinating them to the best effort. A master hand is evident at every stage of Anna Christie, which will be no shrinking flower in the next annual cinema nosegay.
One more shares in the honors–the cameraman, Charles Daniels–for the big pictorial values in the play's high rating.
1/23/1930 LAX Anna Christie
By Louella O. Parsons
Eugene O'Neill might have written Anna Christie with Greta Garbo in mind, so superbly does the role fit MGM's heretofore silent star Swedish star. Miss Garbo has been the cynosure of all eyes since talkies finally made it necessary for this sphinx-like young woman to open her lips and talk. Would or would not this amazingly popular young actress rise to the exigencies of the microphone?
I can tell those who were in doubt that Miss Garbo does respond, and with an ease that surprised this writer. There was no doubt that the mere mention of Greta Garbo would bring out an appalling number of movie fans. I doubt, however, if they were prepared for the young army that descended upon the theater to hear with their own ears whether or not Garbo could talk.
She speaks, let me say, with a surprising freedom from accent. There is the occasional lapse into her natural tongue. But it so perfectly fits the character of "Anna Christie" we wouldn't have it otherwise.. I have in my time seen some excellent "Anna Christies," so the test given Miss Garbo by MGM proves beyond any shadow of a doubt her real ability as an actress
There was Pauline Lord in the stage version, and Blanche Sweet so perfectly fitted to the silent movie. Miss Garbo had terrific competition. That she meets the situation so gloriously is the greatest single tribute we can give her.
The entire credit for the success of Anna Christie by no means falls into the hands of Miss Garbo. Very few actresses have ever had a finer supporting cast. There are only four principals, but what players! There is George Marion who fears the old "debbil sea" with a mighty hatred and yet cannot resist its fascinating lure. His performance as Miss Garbo's father is just as fine as it was when he created the role on the stage.
There is Marie Dressler in a characterization that is absolutely in a class by itself. As old man Christie's woman, a tramp and a drunk, she is really superb. She knows of Anna Christie's past and her drunken efforts to spare the old man from this knowledge are done with the finesse that bespeaks genuine artistry.
I can guarantee that Charles Bickford will have a new string of feminine admirers after his performance as Matt Burke, Irish sailor. Mr. Bickford made a distinct place for himself in Dynamite, but I feel sure he will even make more of a dent in susceptible feminine hearts with his performance of the rough sailor with the well pronounced ego.
Much of the successful work of the players can be laid down to Clarence Brown's direction. Mr. Brown offers many deft and original touches. Although he has always been credited with being one of the best directors in the picture business, Anna Christie is his crowning achievement. Frances Marion, who adapted the play, furnishes a very nice piece of work. In fact, all in all, MGM may feel well satisfied with the talkie version of Eugene O'Neill's famous play.
A two-reel colortone revue, called The Flower Garden, and a Fox Movietone News complete the program.
1/25/1930 EH "Cussing" Is Problem for Clarence Brown
In silent films actors could "cuss" all they wanted to, unless the swear words found their way into subtitles.
But in the talkies the matter of hard words is a problem, no two boards of censors apparently agreeing on just what "cussing" is and when it may or may not be used.
In directing Greta Garbo's first talking picture, Anna Christie, which is playing at the Fox Criterion, Clarence Brown took no chances.
He filmed the scenes three different ways, one with the swearing intact, one with it slurred so it was not clearly understood and one with it eliminated entirely.
The swearing is a part of the play which gives added color to the scene and characters introduced in the course of action which deals with the daughter of a barge captain on the old New York waterfront who seeks regeneration from her previous way of living.
Charles Bickford plays opposite Miss Garbo and the cast includes Marie Dressler and George Marion.
1/25/1930 LAX Louella O. Parsons
Even if Marie Dressler had a hankering after New York and would like to leave Hollywood, there isn't a chance. She has more jobs offered her than any other woman I know, and the only thing that stands in her way is her health. She had a serious sick spell, but she is well again, and is looking remarkably fit. The latest word of Miss Dressler is of the comedy role she is playing with Ernest Torrence in The Singer of Saville, Ramon Novarro's next picture. They play two old opera singers and as a comedy team they tell me they are well worth seeing. Another bit of MGM news is that Lola Lane, under contract to Fox, goes to MGM for an important role in Good News.
2/1/1930 EE GRETA'S SHY GENIUS
By Marie Dressler
(Miss Dressler plays Old Marthy in Anna Christie at the Criterion)
In all my life I have never met a more charming girl than Greta Garbo. I say girl, because she is just that, a dreadfully young creature to carry the burden of a great success; so young that I fairly ached to lay her tired head upon my shoulders as I would my own daughter.
Before the camera Greta is whatever character she portrays, giving every ounce of energy to her role, surrendering completely to the part, asking nothing for herself. I can appreciate the exhausting nervous energy after a day's work. I know exactly what she goes through.
In my own slapstick career I have sapped my vitality to keep up to performances and give my best to my work. And so does Greta, but I never saw any other person who had the dynamic energy to expend that she commands.
As a great artist Garbo stands close and apart. She has achieved a niche all her own, taking no one's place. And she will leave none for a successor. She is a distinct personality for which there is no other mold.
Off the screen, ut of her characterization, Greta is a silent creature. She is not often chatty, but when she does become interested in a subject of conversation and enters into it, she is arresting. Her every word belongs to a thought. She speaks crisply with graphic emphasis.
Her eyes, her hands, her whole body talk with her. She is very positive in her thoughts and words. There is no equivocation. She agrees or disagrees. She likes or dislikes. She thinks only intelligent thoughts and as a result has no time for small talk or gossip. She is not interested in prattle.
Contrary to general impressions. Greta is a very sympathetic girl. There is no aloofness. She is warm, generous, gratefully appreciative of a friendly gesture, of understanding, encouragement, yet disdainful of platitudes, fawning flatteries aimed only to penetrate her natural fortification of reserve that protects her from being ground underfoot by those anxious to be included in her small circle.
Gentle mannered and gentle in disposition, she is frightfully shy because of a born antipathy to personal intrusions, a timidity almost amounting to a feeling of inferiority. She even seems afraid of her own great success, fearful that she will lose control of that great fire of dramatic genius that burns within her.
Her first talking picture is only the beginning of Greta's real career. I know of no greater actress.
2/2/1930 LAX WHY! YES, MARIE IS CHARMING
By Jerry Hoffman
"Fate cast me to play the role of an ugly duckling with no promise of swanning," wrote Marie Dressler in the first chapter of her autobiography. Marie never will realize how thoroughly wrong is part of that sentence.
"The Life Story of an Ugly Duckling," written by Miss Dressler in 1924, related the adventures of twenty-five years on the stage and screen. When she wrote it, Marie was under the impression that she was through with motion pictures. Her last screen appearance had been several years before in Tillie's Punctured Romance," which introduced, to success, a mustached, wistful little comedian named Charles Spencer Chaplin.
Two years ago Marie returned to Hollywood, ostensibly to make one picture. Here she has remained, and here, if motion pictures have their way, will she remain.
"--an ugly duckling with no promise of swanning," wrote Marie.
That depends upon one's conception of beauty. There's that superficial attraction known to be skin deep. Then there is that glorious quality so indelibly impressed on what we call soul. That is the beauty that time, troubles, and this thing known as "Life" never can erase.
On, this isn't intended to be a sermon. But that thought occurred to me as Marie and I sat lunching and as I overheard her pleading with a studio executive to give Polly Moran a song all by herself in the picture Marie and Polly are to make together.
It was a touch of generosity and consideration rare among film folk, for that matter with any professionals. But it was typical of Marie.
Oddly enough, it is just that quality which is responsible for the fact that Marie has been stealing the honors of almost every show and picture in which she plays. Her allotment of scenes in The Hollywood Revue wasn't any greater than any of the other players.
She doesn't appear in every foot of Anna Christie, now at the Criterion Theater. Yet practically in everything in which Marie has been seen, her performance has been outstanding.
It was almost thirty years ago, while a member of the Weber and Fields Company, that newspapers termed Marie Dressler the "star obscurer." Possibly it is just that people would rather laugh than cry. Apropos of which is the concluding paragraph in Marie's autobiography:
"Lack of money means nothing, for one is broke only when health is gone. And if one lives rightly and thinks rightly the loss of health is impossible. One may be old at 16 or young at 80. As for me, I have the blood of explorers and am out to conquer new worlds.
"I have no sense of having ended my career, but rather of having begun it....I do not like a fight, but if one comes I shall give it a hug and a kiss. I am not afraid, for fear means death, and I know that reaching out, giving out part of me--that part that likes to make people laugh and cry and be happy--never can die."
This was written six years ago. The ugly duckling had swanned--but didn't know it.
2/7/1930 EH The Vagabond Lover
By W.E. Oliver
The man who has enraged more males than the Volstead Act is now crooning feminine screengoers into a state of romantic intoxication at the RKO Theater.
Rudy Vallee, Romeo of the Radio, is seen for the current week in The Vagabond Lover.
ROMANCE ORDINARY
The story, sketched in with a stereotyped romance, tells what might have been the career of a personable young man armed with a saxophone, a sweet voice and an unquenchable urge in his climb to fame on the ether.
It serves very well the purpose, as I take it, of introducing to the screen public the youth who nightly causes such consternation around the radio cabinets.
The dulcet singing of his songs and several offerings by his Connecticut Yankees are given legitimate inclusion by the musicale and a charity benefit wherein he is forced by chance to impersonate a famous bandsman.
There is no question that his admirers will go for this picture with both ears, in spite of the disconcerting effect of effect of seeing in celluloid a hero idealized out of the ether.
For out and out screen entertainment, however, the characterization of Marie Dressler, as the fluttery Madame Whitehall, is the chief factor in the picture's success. Miss Dressler, in this picture and in Anna Christie, creates two entirely dissimilar roles that set her far up in the scale of our good character comediennes.
Others of note in the cast are Charles Sellon, resembling Tully Marshall; Eddie Nugent, Nella Walker and Malcolm Waite.
DIRECTION SATISFIES
Marshall Neilan has done a satisfactory job in the direction of James A. Creelman's story.
Ruby Norton heads the vaudeville section of this week. Her well known impersonation of the peroxide vamps of history is a popular offering.
The rest of the vaudeville is in the capable hands of Hal Neiman, a horseman of hilarity, the "Dance Fables" number; Frederick Sylvester in a European novelty, and the amusing dance satire of Ray and Harrison.
A Radio comedy is included on the bill, along with a comedy item, Head Work, in which Al Boasberg mixes with Bugs Baer's trenchant witticisms many of the wisecracks left over from the Wise Cracker series made by F-B-O.
2/6/1930 LAX The Vagabond Lover
By Jerry Hoffman
Rudy Vallee, his crooning voice, his underslung saxophone and his orchestra, made their screen debut yesterday at the RKO Theater in The Vagabond Lover. The "Nation's Idol" (well, the RKO signs say so) has been furnished a story wherein his voice and musical instruments are given many opportunities to cut loose.
The best asset given by Radio Pictures to Rudy is Hollywood's greatest laugh insurance--Marie Dressler. Producers have come to the conclusion that a story or star doesn't matter so long as Marie is in the cast. Hence, once again Marie bolsters up any possible weak moments in story or cast or direction. When the Dressler moves a finger, or twitches her mouth, an entire audience rocks with laughter.
Rudy, himself, isn't by any means disappointing in his first movie. One doesn't expect a "vagabond lover" to act. The flapper followers who adore their Rudy will be duly thrilled when Rudy croons (minus a megaphone) and closed his eyes soulfully. Yes, one can close eyes soulfully. Rudy does. The fact that Rudy's love-making has as much expression as Buster Keaton has after taking a fall, won't bother the girls. I can easily visualize a Vallee fan explaining Rudy's reticence in passion-playing with the thought that he saves that quality for other than commercial occasions. Ah, me--youth is--well, it is, too!
The story written by James Creelman for Vallee is pleasing enough. It contains the situations necessary for the singing, playing and love-making. It is the direction by Marshall Neilan, and the cheapness of the production that weakens the entire picture.
Rudy is presented as the head of an amateur band of musicians, posing as a more famous aggregation. They blunder into exclusive society, the presiding personality being Marie Dressler. Sally Blane is seen as her niece. A charity benefit with the pseudo-famous band as the big attraction is the crux of the plot, with the expose finally resulting in making Rudy's band famous under their own identities.
Sally Blane is lovely enough, but whether direction, dialogue or Sally is to blame, the fact remains that there is much to be desired in her performance. Certainly the dialogue wasn't any help to any of the cast. Danny O'Shea, Eddie Nugent and Norman Peck aid. Nella Walker is very good, with the rest of the cast, including Malcom Waite, Alan Roscoe and Charles Sellon.
There's a really fine vaudeville show at the RKO this week. One of the good, old-fashioned kind and very much worth seeing. There are Ruby Norton, Hal Neiman, "Dance Fahlies" (this is exceptional), Frederick Sylvester and Ray and Harrison.
2/7/1930 HDC Doris Denbo
Margin Mags, the Marie Dressler-Polly Moran comedy which they are working on at MGM will have the inimitable T.Roy Barnes (illegible). He will play the role of "Mr. Kidd," a typical tenant of the boarding house run by the buxom and talented Marie, a sheik at night but just a floor-walker in the daytime. Marie haas won a right to stardom with her unprecedented popularity since her recent screen appearances. Even in Anna Christie, the Greta Garbo masterpiece of construction and setting, she has been said on saveral occasions to steal even this picture. Marie is an actress at heart and be it straight character or broad comedy, she handles it with a master hand.
2/9/1930 FD Anna Christie
(All Talker)
MGM Time, 70 mins.
Intensely engrossing and drab drama of the waterfront. Garbo fascinating and convincing in her first talker. A wow for sophisticated audiences.
Based on Eugene O'Neill's play and produced as a picture some years ago with Blanche Sweet starred. Garbo displays a voice which is somewhat heavy and accented at times, but it is mellow and understandable. She gives a superb performance. Clarence Brown's sympathetic and painstaking direction is always evident. The story is that of a girl, embittered by her experiences with men, who joins her father, a drunken captain of a coal scow. A man they rescue from a raft falls in love with her and she returns his affection. Owing to her past, she feels that she cannot marry him. Cornered as to her reasons for refusing to marry, the girl tells her story. The man disillusioned, leaves but finally returns for a happy ending. Work of Charles Bickford, the lover; George F. Marion, the father, and Marie Dressler is splendid.
Cast, Greta Garbo, Charles Bickford, George F. Marion, Marie Dressler, Lee Phelps.
Director, Clarence Brown; Author, Eugene O'Neill; Adaptor, Frances Marion; Editor, Hugh Wynn; Dialoguer, Eugene O'Neill; Cameraman, William Daniels; Monitor Man, Douglas Shearer.
Direction, aces. Photography, beautiful.
2/12/1930 IDN MARIE DRESSLER IN SERIOUS MOOD AT FOX-CRITERION
By Eleanor Barnes
"I've been trouping in the films since the old nickelodeon days, but Marthy was my first serious screen characterization," said Marie Dressler, discussing her role in Anna Christie, now showing at the Fox Criterion Theater.
"It was a kick doing that bitter, cynical, drink-sodden waterfront hag," Miss Dressler continued, "You know I'd been doing slapstick comedy for so long I was a little bit afraid I might not be able to refrain from injecting a burlesque note into Marthy's character. At that, I guess she didn't escape wholly unscathed.
PHILOSOPHICAL
"Still, there's humor in life, isn't there. And so why shouldn't there be humor in Anna Christie?
"Even in that poor old wreck of a woman who craved only liquor and sneered at life, because she had found it utterly rotten. I'm glad if there is a little drab humor in the characterization—it's more real that way."
Miss Dressler's debut in pictures, however, was in a much lighter vein. This screen comedienne's first picture was Tillie's Punctured Romance, for Mack Sennett in the early days of the films and such now well-known comedians as Charlie Chaplin, Ben Turpin and Ford Sterling were in her supporting cast.
HER HISTORY
After that early comedy success, Miss Dressler made innumerable short comedies. Then she went back to her first love the stage, and amused hundreds of audiences in as many miscellaneous towns and cities over the entire country with her rare humor. Her fine, gay trouping. Her hilarious antics.
"I've spent almost 40 years on the stage and screen, in circuses, vaudeville, musical comedy troupes and other entertainment organizations," Miss Dressler muses reminiscently. "They've been grand years, too, filled with glorious memories, wonderful associations, marvelous friendships. I'm proud of those years, for they've made theatrical history and I've played a little part in making it."
AT MAJESTIC
Miss Dressler played her last stage role about a year and a half ago, when she essayed the role of "the queen" opposite Edward Everett Horton, in his production of Ferenc Molnar's "The Swan," which he produced at his downtown playhouse. Then she came back to the screen, appearing first in The Calahans and the Murphys, Then in Bringing Up Father.
The comedienne made a hit with her work in The Hollywood Revue, produced by MGM. Then, in rapid succession, she appeared in a series of characterizations in such films as The Swan, starring Lillian Gish; The Vagabond Lover, starring Rudy Vallee; Anna Christie, starring Greta Garbo; Road Show, co-featuring Charles King and Bessie Love, and The March of Time, MGM's old-timer's revue.
Now Miss Dressler and Polly Moran are making Margin Muggs, a burlesque on the recent stock market debacle. And after that, it is said MGM has several important and promising roles lined up for her.
2/16/1930 EH 25 Stars for Film Guild's Gambol:
Masters of Ceremonies include: Frank Fay, Jack Benny, Edmund Lowe, Ben Bard, Pat O'Malley, Neil Hamilton, Alan Hale and Eddie Hall, among others.
Cast includes Nancy Carroll, Marie Dressler, Polly Moran, Laurel and Hardy, Jack Oakie, James Gleason, Stepin Fetchit, Joe E. Brown and many others.
2/21/1930 HDC
Marie Dressler, inimitable screen comedienne, essays the role of an old opera singer in The Singer of Saville, Ramon Novarro's latest starring vehicle for the MGM studios.
2/28/1930 LAX Louella O. Parsons
You can't keep a good girl from getting the honors due her. Polly Moran, who has played everything from maid to female clown on the MGM lot, has just been signed on a long term contract by MGM, Polly is at this moment playing in Caught Short, a stock market comedy, with Marie Dressler. I hear tell that there will be other MGM comedies with Marie and Polly. The more the merrier, I say.
3/6/1930 LAX Louella O. Parsons
Marie Dressler doing a tipsy act for the publicity department at MGM.
3/5/1930 EH Ad for William Haines' film Girl Said No with Marie Dressler opens tomorrow with Polly Moran.
3/7/1930 IDN The Girl Said No
Well, The Girl Said No, but that didn't mean a thing to William Haines.
He won her anyway in his own boisterous manner and even though she was "no-ing" him to the very last, she had to finally give in to Billy's wishes and marry him or else endure some more of his clowning.
The entire story, however, is unfolded in a hilarious film at Loew's State Theater this week.
Hilarious is one of describing it. And sill, another. And come to think of it, silly is the ideal adjective to use in relating the latest Haines goings-on. The first half of the picture is rather bewildering to the spectator–he doesn't know who is crazy, he or the actors. Anyhow, it's all good fun, but certainly noisy and rowdy. And this writer defies anyone to keep a straight face under the persuasive comedy efforts of the amusing Mr. Haines.
DRAMATIC, TOO
Billy calms down in this picture long enough to prove that he can turn in a splendid dramatic performance. That is as serious as any Haines film could possibly be. Even the dramatic moments are watched with a questionable eye by the audience–they never know what moment Mr. Haines will break out with a befitting wisecrack.
Anyhow the few dramatic moments of the plot are met by Billy without worry, and he shows quite a flare for wistful characterizations.
One sequence stands out from all others. It is that dealing with Mr. Haines' efforts in trying to sell the obstinate Marie Dressler some bonds by getting her tipsy on alcohol. Here the fun reaches its wildest points and the scenes between Dressler and Haines will be remembered long after the remaining portions of the film are forgotten.
SIMPLE PLOT
The story is quite simple. Bill is the boy who should have been locked up by his family in an asylum before they ever allowed him to burst forth into the world with his stock of tricks and wise remarks. He meets a girl and wins her after she tries her best to avoid him. And he also triumphs over the rival in a business deal and happiness is complete. Sam Wood directed and let Haines run riot in various sequences by permitting him to lose his trousers, talk baby talk, pout and make silly faces and generally create havoc.
Leila Hyams is the girl in the case and delivers a thoroughly charming delineation. Francis Bushman Jr. is the villain and is convincing. Wilbur Mack makes his few scenes stand out, and there are capable performances turned in by Clara Blandick, William Janney, William Mong and Polly Moran. As for Marie Dressler! Well, she's just a riot, that all.
Eddie Peabody is featured in Fanchon & Marco's "Coral Idea" and engages in some neat banjo plunking. And the Royal Samoans, Frank Duc, LaPetite Marie and the Sunkist Beauties, not forgetting George Stoll and band, help to make the stage entertainment amusing and tuneful.
3/7/1930 EH The Girl Said No
By W.E. Oliver
The man who is timid about his love making should be all means see William Haines this week at Loew's State in The Girl Said No. This gifted farceur takes after his girl like a fox hound and at times with the lack of repression displayed by a Cossack.
I say gifted farceur because William Haines is fast developing into the best light comedian on the screen.
In this picture he is given limitless scope for his impudent talents, although he is humbled in time to be brought under the winning tape in good odor.
VIEWPOINT PLAYFUL
He is seen as the college graduate, Tom Ward, home and facing life with his playful viewpoint still unabashed.
He remains undisconcerted until he meets Mary Howe, in the person of Leila Hyams, and after a tenacious courthip that trails uproariously through night clubs, in and out of automobiles and into the bond office where she is employed, the girl still says no.
His father dies and he is thrown out of the gilded class to make his own way. But the highly-charged personality that brought about discomfiture in this heart affair sells a million or so dollar bond issue to the firm's hardest customer and he abducts the girl from his rival right under the parson's nose.
Sam Wood, the director, has performed the same, sure, flippant, polished services for this picture that he did for So This Is College. Its spirit results from the direction as much as from the fine work of Haines and his cast.
I defy you to laugh harder at anything than his scenes with Marie Dressler, that is if the censors haven't acted before you have time to get down to Loew's State.
Leila Hyams and Phyllis Crane each do a very creditable assignment in the picture. Polly Moran contributes to the glee as the servant.
CAST IS GOOD
Others in the cast are William V. Mong, Junior Coghlan, Francis X. Bushman Jr., and Willard Mack. They are all good.
The dialogue, which I understand is by Charles MacArthur, is as clever and natural–a welcome symptom of the stage dialoguist boring within.
Eddie Peabody is back on familiar grounds again as part of the Fanchon and Marco stage act, "Coral," this week. His lukewarm welcome yesterday developed to a mild riot when he quit fiddling about some newfangled instrument he and brought out with him and twanged some stirring melodies in the banjo. There is no question about his robust virtuosity on this instrument.
The Heart Metrotone News and Fashion News are included on the bill.
The Girl Said No. Directed by Sam Wood. Opened March 6, 1930.
CAST: William Haines, Leila Hyams, William V. Mong, Junior Coghlan, Francis X. Bushman, Polly Moran, Marie Dressler and Wilbur Mack.
3/7/1930 LAX The Girl Said No
By Gregory Goss
Adulation, like some "liquid refreshment," has a stimulating effect, William Haines as a young fellow just out of college finds difficulty in adjusting himself to the time-clock and other symbols of the commercial world in The Girl Said No, at Loew's State. The action of this rollicking comedy directed by Sam Wood may be said to be a sobering up after a campus hangover of flattery.
Haines as Tom Ward has been the life of every party during his four years in pursuit of higher education. He is so filled with the zest of living that responsibilities are dismissed as the chief non-essentials of existence.
Of course, the day of reckoning comes and Ward meets the issues with little evasion. Haines does good work in tempering the exuberant spirit of the character with solemnity when the occasion merits. His comedy scenes are riotous and those with the Ward family after the death of the father are played with an unsuspected poise.
In addition to its good direction, The Girl Said No is particularly well cast. Lelia Hyams again proves attractive as Haines' leading woman. Ralph Bushman is a splendid foil for the comedy pranks, and the family, consisting of William V. Mong, Clara Blandick, Phyllis Crane, William Janney and Junior Coghlan, attracts interest and sympathy.
While Marie Dressler and Polly Moran are not "teamed" as they have been in many a recent picture, they as individuals are important to the scheme of things. The former is a wealthy spinster to whom Haines tries to sell bonds. This scene, though brief, has the TNT to make the house rock. Polly is the faithful maid of all work in the Ward household sharing their vicissitudes in the most matter-of-fact fashion.
Appearing in the Fanchon and Marco "Coral Idea" is Eddie Peabody. The diminutive banjoist plays selections from "Rio Rita" and "Sunnyside Up." Then he asks for "requests." With one accord the audience at the opening performance demanded "The St Louis Blues." And Peabody gave it with all the vigorous rhythm that has made the piece peculiarly his own.
3/7/1930 EH WILLIAM HAINES WISECRACKS HIS COURTSHIP WAY
If you marry me, you man have an awful tough time, but you'll never be bored."
Nobody but William Haines could say that to a girl and make her believe it. Unless perhaps it is Eddie Peabody. He is back at Lowe's State Theater this week, yellow bangs, flared trousers, banjo, pep, and all the rest.
His year's absence makes the old tunes better and the new ones unbeatable. As usual, there isn't time enough for him to do justice to his harmonics or the audience's demands.
William Haines, however, is the real author of the wooing promise in his convulsive comic, The Girl Said No. When a picture stars with the time-honored finis, race between the roadster and the train, that speed is only a foretaste of the running comedy of a smart-cracker winning a girl who had definitely said no.
Haines is the same as ever. This time the loss of the family wealth through the father's death serves to straighten out the high-pressure, hey-hey boy; in fact, to give him his birthright as a salesman.
Meantime, however, he has to get out of the way a successful rival who can offer the poor working-girl a good home. (She, by the way, is only a steno, but she lives in a palatial apartment, and needs a home badly, she says).
The girl who could resist this clever kid is a strange sort, in another way. She can say no to the man she thinks she loves and say yes to the man she knows she does not. But Leila Hyams is a gorgeous blonde, so she can be forgiven for her strange evidences of perverse backbone and allowed to succumb to the rollicking here.
Why the ridiculous antics of pouring onion soup down a man's neck, meowing in a cafe at a man who orders milk, or carrying the waiting-room bench into the secretary's office are funny isn't quite clear. But they are piled up fast and climaxed by getting Marie Dressler drunk, they cannot offer laugh resistance to Haines' sales talk.
He is not the only funster. He is aided and abetted by Marie Dressler as the tight-fisted millionairess whom he 'sells,' Polly Moran, the leather-tongued, gold-hearted servant girl, one and two waiters, who get some laughs principally by non-understandable but expressive volubility.
The Coral "idea" of Fanchon and Marco conception makes a colorful milieu for a revue of girls, dances, and knife-swinging south sea islanders, even though a satin-breeched and bewigged tenor presides over the finale.
3/10/1930 LAX Louella O. Parsons
New York, March 9.—The plans for Let Us Be Gay, Norma Shearer's final MGM picture, are of more than passing interest, first, because it will be Norma's last picture for a long time and, secondly, because as a stage play it was so tremendously popular. I hear tell the details of the cast from one of my Sherlock Holmes scouts, or shall I call him Philo Vance, and be up to date.
Rod LaRocque, ‘tis said, will play opposite Miss Shearer. His role is the divorced husband who is in love with his ex-wife. This situation, as you will recall, in the play, is brought about by a witty old dowager, and will be played by Marie Dressler. The granddaughter she seeks to protect will be in the hands of Sally Eilers.
This is Sally's first job on the MGM lot, and the first time she and Hoot Gibson have separated in their work since their engagement was announced.
3/11/1930 EH Marie Dressler Steals More Comedy Honors
Marie Dressler's splendid comedy interpretation during the last few months rank her as the season's leading comedienne.
During the last month she has "stolen" comedy honors in three major attractions. Her latest work in William Haines' comedy The Girl Said No, now playing at Loew's State, is declared to excel her comic efforts in Anna Christie and the Hollywood Revue.
3/18/1930 HDC Doris Denbo
Marie Dressler, out there at MGM is going in for both comedy and character roles, and she fits equally well into each. This time she has been signed for the role of the peppy and irritated dowager in Let Us Be Gay. This should be a marvelous part for the talented and beloved Marie. This is Norma Shearer's last picture before temporary retirement. Rod La Roque plays opposite. Sally Eilers, Hedda Hopper, Raymond Hackett, Tyrell Davis and Gilbert Emory are in support.
gdh
11/23/1933 HCN Elizabeth Yeaman
Out of the 30 winners in the Paramount Search For Beauty contest, six have been retained on long-term contracts. The other 24 will leave shortly for their homes in faraway lands, as the picture has been completed. Gwenilian Gill of Edinburg, Scotland, won the $1,000 bonus for the best performance given by the girls. She is just 17, and has been offered a term contract, but first has to obtain permission from her Scotch father to remain in Hollywood. Clara Lou Sheridan of Dallas, Tex., is the other girl who won a term contract. Dallas, in fact, has two contract winners. The other one is Alfred Delcambre. He remains here on contract. However, Edrod Tidbury of Johannesburg, British South Africa, won the boy's bonus of $1,000 for the best performance. He remained on contract, too. Julian Madison of Minneapolis and Colin Tapley of Dunedin, New Zealand, are the other two that have been retained with contracts. Paramount believes that all of these six newcomers show promise of real screen careers.
Ordinarily, winners of film contests appear once and are not seen again. But remember that there are still three Panther Women winners under contract at Paramount and working regularly. And the Lion Man, Buster Crabbe, is still going strong. So perhaps these six new winners may really amount to something.
....
Ever since Cavalcade, Winfield Sheehan has shown a particular fondness for English players. One of his newest imports is Pat Paterson, a musical comedy star....Miss Paterson seems to be the choice for the feminine lead in Bottoms Up, a Buddy DeSylva musical film which was first mentioned for Lilian Harvey. Spencer Tracy and John Boles seem to be set for the male leads in this film.
....
Gary Cooper's romance with Sandra Shaw is keeping him in New York at the moment, but he is expected back in three weeks to settle some business affairs. For one thing, there is his Paramount contract to be settled. He has one more picture to make on his old contract, and he must also decide whether he will sign again with this company. He already has committed himself for one picture with Samuel Goldwyn, and now I hear that MGM is most anxious to obtain Gary for the co-starring lead with Marion Davies in Operator 13. This is the Robert W. Chambers story which will reach the screen as more or less of a musical. Walter Wanger will be the producer on the picture.
....
Sarah Padden is having an opportunity to prove her versatility in the matter of characterizations and accents. At the moment, she is playing a featured role of the Polish mother in As the Earth Turns, at Warners. Before that she portrayed a Swede in Queen Christina, an Eskimo woman in Man of Two Worlds, with Francis Lederer at Radio Pictures, and a colored mammy in Ann Vickers at the same studio.
....
Paramount admits that the reason Miriam Hopkins was given a leave of absence to star in "Jezebel" on the New York stage is that the studio holds the first option on the screen rights to the play. Paramount has been several jumps ahead of the other studios in grabbing the rights to new Broadway plays this year. And if "Jezebel" is a hit, you may look to see it transposed to the Paramount screen with Miss Hopkins in her original role. Tallulah Bankhead, first chosen for this role, is still ill in a hospital in New York.
....
Newspaper stories are getting another revival on the screen. I learned today that Woman and the Law, a Fox picture now in production, is a newspaper story. This fact leaked out when Robert McWade was cast as the city editor. Jimmy Dunn and Claire Trevor have the leads, but Jimmy is not to be seen as the reporter. I believe it is Miss Trevor who does the reporting in this film.
And Above Timberline, the new Gene Fowler story recently announced for production at MGM also is a newspaper story. It is the original idea proposed sometime ago for a story based on the lives of Tammen and Bonfils of the Denver Post. This should be quite a thrilling melodrama.
....
George Raft has had his option picked up several months ahead of time at Paramount. When he starts to work on his next picture it will be with a nice boost in salary. And from now on Raft will be a star officially. I imagine most people thought he already was a star. But he doesn't actually get the star crown until his next picture.
....
Paul Perez, Fox writer, has been given a three month leave of absence and sails on Saturday aboard a freighter for Europe. He will spend a month in England visiting his son who is in school there.
....
Signed by 66 members of the Citizens Conservation Corps camped near Saugus, Calif., Mae West received one of the most unique invitations of her career here today. The letter was written to her by C.R. Engel, and bore the signatures of the rest of the men in the camp. "In fact, 200 men have lost all sense of direction and have completely gone West," wrote the C.C.C. boys. "One location," they added, "is 10 miles north of Castiac on the new Ridge Road. So you must come up sometime–soon."
Marie Dressler In the 30's
ABBREVIATIONS
EE – Los Angeles Evening Express
EH -- Los Angeles Evening Herald
EHE -- Los Angeles Evening Herald Express
FD – Film Daily
HCN -- Hollywood Citizen News
HDC -- Hollywood Daily Citizen
LAR -- Los Angeles Record
LAPR -- Los Angeles Post-Record
LAX -- Los Angeles Examiner
MPH – Motion Picture Herald
10/7/1929 EH MARIE'S SUCCESSFUL IN TALKIES, REPORT
Marie Dressler, who is essaying a featured comedy characterization opposite the popular Rudy Vallee in his first sound production, The Beloved Vagabond, is finding even greater fame as a featured comedienne in dialogue pictures than she experienced as the leading comedy star of the early silent films, it is reported.
10/22/1929 EH Scouting the Sinema
By Dorothy Herzog
QUEEN MOTHER
When John Considine Jr. received the telegram that notified him Marie Dressler could and would play the queen mother in The Swan, he and director Paul Stein were that delighted.
This outloud, which will bring Lillian Gish back to the silver sheet, boasts quite a sterling cast: Marie, Miss Gish, Conrad Nagel, Rod LaRocque and O.P. Heggie.
Mr. Heggie has been brought from New York especially to portray the reverend father part. Production gets under way today at the United Artists' studio.
1/3/1930 HDC Doris Denbo
Margin Mags, the Marie Dressler-Polly Moran comedy which they are working on out there at MGM will have the inimitable T. Roy Barnes. He will play the role of "Mr. Kidd," a typical tenant of the boarding house run by the buxom and talented Marie, a sheik at night but just a floor-walker in the day-time. Marie has won a right to stardom with her unprecedented popular since her recent screen appearances. Even n Anna Christie, the Greta Garbo masterpiece of construction and acting, she has been said on several occasions to steal even this picture. Marie is an actress at heart and be it straight character role or broad comedy, she handles it with it with a master hand.
1/4/1930 HDC Doris Denbo
Marie Dressler and Polly Moran are going to be co-featured in a production at MGM soon. The success of Dangerous Females co-starring those two, caused MGM officials to decide to make a feature co-starring them. No details of this production have been given and I cannot seem to get any except that everyone knows it will be crammed with laughs whether they are written into the script or not. Just give these fine old troupers any comedy situation and watch the laughs roll in.
1/8/1930 LAX Louella O. Parsons
Marie Dressler recovering from her recent illness on her way to Santa Barbara.
1/9/1930 EH Scouting the Sinema by Dorothy Herzog
Polly Moran and Marie Dressler begin work soon in a new double star yarn for MGM. This time they'll be rival boarding house keepers in New York.
Polly invests in the stock market and cashes in. She advises Marie to do likewise. Which Marie does and loses the family shirt. Whereupon the rumpus commences and continues until they get together drinking through the rye. No matter what flick those two are in, the nearest box office can have my money--both nickels.
1/15/1930 LAX Louella O. Parsons
I can guarantee there will be a laugh in this film. Marie Dressler and her side kick, Polly Moran, are to be starred in a feature with the stock market as a background. They play two scrub women who get rich suddenly. Can't you just see those two women! I suppose we will then have an inside glimpse of the terrible crash in the market and the aftermath and its effect on the people who speculated. The story is an original by Willard Mack and Chuck Reisner is the director. If this picture isn't funny, I am going to say all hope is lost.
1/22/1930 HDC Doris Denbo
Marie Dressler and Polly Moran are going to make another hilarious laugh fest and this time it has to do with the recent stock market debacle in Wall Street. Willard Mack has written the story which is to guarantee its value. Charles Reisner will direct. This should be an almost perfect combination for entertainment of the best sort.
1/23/1930 IDN Anna Christie
By Eleanor Barnes
The sphinx-like silence of Greta Garbo has been broken in the stark lines of Anna Christie, which was presented at the Fox Criterion yesterday.
Garbo, whose strange, exotic personality has fascinated countless thousands of picture fans, as one might expect, easily triumphed over diction and emerged still the mysterious tragedienne of filmdom.
A long line of fans were at the Criterion early to get a glimpse of Anna Christie.
They came away realizing that behind those haunted eyes there was a compelling charm that that perfectly fitted the bowed figure of O'Neill's heroine.
NOT SO
Those who have seen Anna Christie in its past versions may feel that the Garbo interpretation will not sustain their interest, or justify a repetition of the tale.
But the spirit in which Garbo and Clarence Brown, her director, have approached the piece, give it new vitality and emphasize the vigor of the character.
The irrelevancies of the "old dabil the sea" in treatment of its followers pound a mighty lesson home–dreams, loves, lust–all lightly treated by the powerful elements. O'Neill builds his plots that way–man's eternal struggle against fate, and his exaltation when temporary success triumphs.
The plot is well know to theatergoers who saw Pauline Lord in the title role on the stage and Blanche Sweet in the silent version on the screen.
POWERFUL
Garbo is amazing in the part. Keeping in mind her difficulty with the English language, and realizing the role calls for heavy dramatics, she has done a surprising piece of work.
The star's Swedish accent serves her in great stead, for she speaks slightly broken. Anna Christie had been relegated to the farm of her father's people out in the stark middle west regions, while he followed the sea.
Anna is met on her first visit to New York to see her father after 15 years of neglect. He had dreams of her being a fine, sweet girl. But Anna was ill, physically and mentally. She wanted a vacation from men.
EXALTED
The call of the ocean in her blood, the girl felt purified when she was free on her father's barge. Then love came in the form of a big, tough sailor, who segregated his women into two classes. Anna seemed decent, the sort he would marry.
Her affection, however, presented this–she would confess of her past–and it took soul scourging on the part of this brawny seafarer to admit that she would make a worthwhile wife.
The characters in this play are few, but colorful. Marie Dressler and George Marion, two of the mellowest and finest troupers in the business, do superb character work in their roles of Marthy, the hard-boiled old sweetheart of Chris, Anna's father.
The opening sequences between Marthy and her lover are packed with humor, pathos and understanding–this fellow Brown knows his characters–and their jaunt to a beer-joint on a farewell tour is one of the most amusing episodes seen in many moons. Both Marion and Miss Dressler do glorious work.
Charles Bickford, who has been dominating the downtown theaters lately by his work with Lenore Ulric and in Hell's Heroes, is cast as the Irishman fascinated by her Swedish girl. Bickford has a rich brogue and an easy swing to his acting and is convincingly cast.
Garbo's talking debut is a success.
1/23/1930 EE Anna Christie
By Monroe Lathrop
"That old sea devil" bewailed by Chris, the barge skipper, today tossed up on the shore the finest dramatic talking picture yet made.
Incomparably superior in not one but may ways is Clarence Brown's screen version of Anna Christie, which opened at the Criterion Theater this morning, revealing in its course Greta Garbo as the best emotional actress of the films since the late Jeanne Eagels.
This MGM production of Eugene O'Neill's best-known play, which sets a new mark for future serious plays to shoot at, will delight the dramatist's admirers no less than those who find pleasure in high grade character acting and direction.
Not only does the Scandinavian star rise to unexpected levels in her portrayal, but there are three other vivid characterizations that will be stamped deeply on the memory of all who see them. And not the least among the pleased should be the author of Anna Christie, whose work has never before exercised such interest and grip, thanks to the scope of the dramatic camera.
Fog scenes, waterfront views, a storm at sea are a few things that were absence from the confines of the stage version. In only one respect may O'Neill demur. The censor bogey has forced the makers of the picture to pull some of the verbal punch. The brutal candor of the original dialogue isn't there.
Even so, this drama of seafaring folk is salty with its bristling, rugged types and events. Miss Garbo is no longer the mute and languid lady of a romantic dream world. With the slightest accent which befits her role of a transplanted Scandinavian girl who conceals her sordid secret from a father and a sweetheart who think her unsullied, she depicts and sustains the character with gripping fidelity.
It is the more surprising because it is marked by a variety and skill we look for in players of long experience and training. When the play's crisis comes and she battles the sullen father and embittered sweetheart she rises to the violent emotion with true power.
Such true instinct and talent for character should not again be wasted on the trivial and shallow stuff that has branded Garbo as a mere type of personality.
If curiosity in her speaking debut was dominant in this play, interest soon spread out to the star's splendid support. Astonishment awaits those who see the comedienne Marie Dressler in her first serious role. As Marthy, the besotted creature of men's lust, she gives an unflaggingly fine performance, grim, poignant, pathetic.
And when Charles Bickford is hauled aboard as the castaway the play blazes up never to die down in the fire of his ardor for Anna and anger when he learns the truth about her. It is the best work to date of this potential star. From his rich Irish brogue to his storms of passion it is rich with detail and the perfection of brawny character painting.
George Marion is a fixture with Anna Christie. Well remembered is his work as the weak, vacillating skipper, Chris, on the stage and again in the silent-picture version, now the ripeness of his talent comes into full flower. It isn't easy to imagine anyone else in the part.
Behind all these elements of a great cast, it is not to be overlooked, is the skilled hand of the director, Clarence Brown, holding its characters within the line, building up the situations. Exceptional plays don't just happen. They are created by a hand balancing its factors and co-ordinating them to the best effort. A master hand is evident at every stage of Anna Christie, which will be no shrinking flower in the next annual cinema nosegay.
One more shares in the honors–the cameraman, Charles Daniels–for the big pictorial values in the play's high rating.
1/23/1930 LAX Anna Christie
By Louella O. Parsons
Eugene O'Neill might have written Anna Christie with Greta Garbo in mind, so superbly does the role fit MGM's heretofore silent star Swedish star. Miss Garbo has been the cynosure of all eyes since talkies finally made it necessary for this sphinx-like young woman to open her lips and talk. Would or would not this amazingly popular young actress rise to the exigencies of the microphone?
I can tell those who were in doubt that Miss Garbo does respond, and with an ease that surprised this writer. There was no doubt that the mere mention of Greta Garbo would bring out an appalling number of movie fans. I doubt, however, if they were prepared for the young army that descended upon the theater to hear with their own ears whether or not Garbo could talk.
She speaks, let me say, with a surprising freedom from accent. There is the occasional lapse into her natural tongue. But it so perfectly fits the character of "Anna Christie" we wouldn't have it otherwise.. I have in my time seen some excellent "Anna Christies," so the test given Miss Garbo by MGM proves beyond any shadow of a doubt her real ability as an actress
There was Pauline Lord in the stage version, and Blanche Sweet so perfectly fitted to the silent movie. Miss Garbo had terrific competition. That she meets the situation so gloriously is the greatest single tribute we can give her.
The entire credit for the success of Anna Christie by no means falls into the hands of Miss Garbo. Very few actresses have ever had a finer supporting cast. There are only four principals, but what players! There is George Marion who fears the old "debbil sea" with a mighty hatred and yet cannot resist its fascinating lure. His performance as Miss Garbo's father is just as fine as it was when he created the role on the stage.
There is Marie Dressler in a characterization that is absolutely in a class by itself. As old man Christie's woman, a tramp and a drunk, she is really superb. She knows of Anna Christie's past and her drunken efforts to spare the old man from this knowledge are done with the finesse that bespeaks genuine artistry.
I can guarantee that Charles Bickford will have a new string of feminine admirers after his performance as Matt Burke, Irish sailor. Mr. Bickford made a distinct place for himself in Dynamite, but I feel sure he will even make more of a dent in susceptible feminine hearts with his performance of the rough sailor with the well pronounced ego.
Much of the successful work of the players can be laid down to Clarence Brown's direction. Mr. Brown offers many deft and original touches. Although he has always been credited with being one of the best directors in the picture business, Anna Christie is his crowning achievement. Frances Marion, who adapted the play, furnishes a very nice piece of work. In fact, all in all, MGM may feel well satisfied with the talkie version of Eugene O'Neill's famous play.
A two-reel colortone revue, called The Flower Garden, and a Fox Movietone News complete the program.
1/25/1930 EH "Cussing" Is Problem for Clarence Brown
In silent films actors could "cuss" all they wanted to, unless the swear words found their way into subtitles.
But in the talkies the matter of hard words is a problem, no two boards of censors apparently agreeing on just what "cussing" is and when it may or may not be used.
In directing Greta Garbo's first talking picture, Anna Christie, which is playing at the Fox Criterion, Clarence Brown took no chances.
He filmed the scenes three different ways, one with the swearing intact, one with it slurred so it was not clearly understood and one with it eliminated entirely.
The swearing is a part of the play which gives added color to the scene and characters introduced in the course of action which deals with the daughter of a barge captain on the old New York waterfront who seeks regeneration from her previous way of living.
Charles Bickford plays opposite Miss Garbo and the cast includes Marie Dressler and George Marion.
1/25/1930 LAX Louella O. Parsons
Even if Marie Dressler had a hankering after New York and would like to leave Hollywood, there isn't a chance. She has more jobs offered her than any other woman I know, and the only thing that stands in her way is her health. She had a serious sick spell, but she is well again, and is looking remarkably fit. The latest word of Miss Dressler is of the comedy role she is playing with Ernest Torrence in The Singer of Saville, Ramon Novarro's next picture. They play two old opera singers and as a comedy team they tell me they are well worth seeing. Another bit of MGM news is that Lola Lane, under contract to Fox, goes to MGM for an important role in Good News.
2/1/1930 EE GRETA'S SHY GENIUS
By Marie Dressler
(Miss Dressler plays Old Marthy in Anna Christie at the Criterion)
In all my life I have never met a more charming girl than Greta Garbo. I say girl, because she is just that, a dreadfully young creature to carry the burden of a great success; so young that I fairly ached to lay her tired head upon my shoulders as I would my own daughter.
Before the camera Greta is whatever character she portrays, giving every ounce of energy to her role, surrendering completely to the part, asking nothing for herself. I can appreciate the exhausting nervous energy after a day's work. I know exactly what she goes through.
In my own slapstick career I have sapped my vitality to keep up to performances and give my best to my work. And so does Greta, but I never saw any other person who had the dynamic energy to expend that she commands.
As a great artist Garbo stands close and apart. She has achieved a niche all her own, taking no one's place. And she will leave none for a successor. She is a distinct personality for which there is no other mold.
Off the screen, ut of her characterization, Greta is a silent creature. She is not often chatty, but when she does become interested in a subject of conversation and enters into it, she is arresting. Her every word belongs to a thought. She speaks crisply with graphic emphasis.
Her eyes, her hands, her whole body talk with her. She is very positive in her thoughts and words. There is no equivocation. She agrees or disagrees. She likes or dislikes. She thinks only intelligent thoughts and as a result has no time for small talk or gossip. She is not interested in prattle.
Contrary to general impressions. Greta is a very sympathetic girl. There is no aloofness. She is warm, generous, gratefully appreciative of a friendly gesture, of understanding, encouragement, yet disdainful of platitudes, fawning flatteries aimed only to penetrate her natural fortification of reserve that protects her from being ground underfoot by those anxious to be included in her small circle.
Gentle mannered and gentle in disposition, she is frightfully shy because of a born antipathy to personal intrusions, a timidity almost amounting to a feeling of inferiority. She even seems afraid of her own great success, fearful that she will lose control of that great fire of dramatic genius that burns within her.
Her first talking picture is only the beginning of Greta's real career. I know of no greater actress.
2/2/1930 LAX WHY! YES, MARIE IS CHARMING
By Jerry Hoffman
"Fate cast me to play the role of an ugly duckling with no promise of swanning," wrote Marie Dressler in the first chapter of her autobiography. Marie never will realize how thoroughly wrong is part of that sentence.
"The Life Story of an Ugly Duckling," written by Miss Dressler in 1924, related the adventures of twenty-five years on the stage and screen. When she wrote it, Marie was under the impression that she was through with motion pictures. Her last screen appearance had been several years before in Tillie's Punctured Romance," which introduced, to success, a mustached, wistful little comedian named Charles Spencer Chaplin.
Two years ago Marie returned to Hollywood, ostensibly to make one picture. Here she has remained, and here, if motion pictures have their way, will she remain.
"--an ugly duckling with no promise of swanning," wrote Marie.
That depends upon one's conception of beauty. There's that superficial attraction known to be skin deep. Then there is that glorious quality so indelibly impressed on what we call soul. That is the beauty that time, troubles, and this thing known as "Life" never can erase.
On, this isn't intended to be a sermon. But that thought occurred to me as Marie and I sat lunching and as I overheard her pleading with a studio executive to give Polly Moran a song all by herself in the picture Marie and Polly are to make together.
It was a touch of generosity and consideration rare among film folk, for that matter with any professionals. But it was typical of Marie.
Oddly enough, it is just that quality which is responsible for the fact that Marie has been stealing the honors of almost every show and picture in which she plays. Her allotment of scenes in The Hollywood Revue wasn't any greater than any of the other players.
She doesn't appear in every foot of Anna Christie, now at the Criterion Theater. Yet practically in everything in which Marie has been seen, her performance has been outstanding.
It was almost thirty years ago, while a member of the Weber and Fields Company, that newspapers termed Marie Dressler the "star obscurer." Possibly it is just that people would rather laugh than cry. Apropos of which is the concluding paragraph in Marie's autobiography:
"Lack of money means nothing, for one is broke only when health is gone. And if one lives rightly and thinks rightly the loss of health is impossible. One may be old at 16 or young at 80. As for me, I have the blood of explorers and am out to conquer new worlds.
"I have no sense of having ended my career, but rather of having begun it....I do not like a fight, but if one comes I shall give it a hug and a kiss. I am not afraid, for fear means death, and I know that reaching out, giving out part of me--that part that likes to make people laugh and cry and be happy--never can die."
This was written six years ago. The ugly duckling had swanned--but didn't know it.
2/7/1930 EH The Vagabond Lover
By W.E. Oliver
The man who has enraged more males than the Volstead Act is now crooning feminine screengoers into a state of romantic intoxication at the RKO Theater.
Rudy Vallee, Romeo of the Radio, is seen for the current week in The Vagabond Lover.
ROMANCE ORDINARY
The story, sketched in with a stereotyped romance, tells what might have been the career of a personable young man armed with a saxophone, a sweet voice and an unquenchable urge in his climb to fame on the ether.
It serves very well the purpose, as I take it, of introducing to the screen public the youth who nightly causes such consternation around the radio cabinets.
The dulcet singing of his songs and several offerings by his Connecticut Yankees are given legitimate inclusion by the musicale and a charity benefit wherein he is forced by chance to impersonate a famous bandsman.
There is no question that his admirers will go for this picture with both ears, in spite of the disconcerting effect of effect of seeing in celluloid a hero idealized out of the ether.
For out and out screen entertainment, however, the characterization of Marie Dressler, as the fluttery Madame Whitehall, is the chief factor in the picture's success. Miss Dressler, in this picture and in Anna Christie, creates two entirely dissimilar roles that set her far up in the scale of our good character comediennes.
Others of note in the cast are Charles Sellon, resembling Tully Marshall; Eddie Nugent, Nella Walker and Malcolm Waite.
DIRECTION SATISFIES
Marshall Neilan has done a satisfactory job in the direction of James A. Creelman's story.
Ruby Norton heads the vaudeville section of this week. Her well known impersonation of the peroxide vamps of history is a popular offering.
The rest of the vaudeville is in the capable hands of Hal Neiman, a horseman of hilarity, the "Dance Fables" number; Frederick Sylvester in a European novelty, and the amusing dance satire of Ray and Harrison.
A Radio comedy is included on the bill, along with a comedy item, Head Work, in which Al Boasberg mixes with Bugs Baer's trenchant witticisms many of the wisecracks left over from the Wise Cracker series made by F-B-O.
2/6/1930 LAX The Vagabond Lover
By Jerry Hoffman
Rudy Vallee, his crooning voice, his underslung saxophone and his orchestra, made their screen debut yesterday at the RKO Theater in The Vagabond Lover. The "Nation's Idol" (well, the RKO signs say so) has been furnished a story wherein his voice and musical instruments are given many opportunities to cut loose.
The best asset given by Radio Pictures to Rudy is Hollywood's greatest laugh insurance--Marie Dressler. Producers have come to the conclusion that a story or star doesn't matter so long as Marie is in the cast. Hence, once again Marie bolsters up any possible weak moments in story or cast or direction. When the Dressler moves a finger, or twitches her mouth, an entire audience rocks with laughter.
Rudy, himself, isn't by any means disappointing in his first movie. One doesn't expect a "vagabond lover" to act. The flapper followers who adore their Rudy will be duly thrilled when Rudy croons (minus a megaphone) and closed his eyes soulfully. Yes, one can close eyes soulfully. Rudy does. The fact that Rudy's love-making has as much expression as Buster Keaton has after taking a fall, won't bother the girls. I can easily visualize a Vallee fan explaining Rudy's reticence in passion-playing with the thought that he saves that quality for other than commercial occasions. Ah, me--youth is--well, it is, too!
The story written by James Creelman for Vallee is pleasing enough. It contains the situations necessary for the singing, playing and love-making. It is the direction by Marshall Neilan, and the cheapness of the production that weakens the entire picture.
Rudy is presented as the head of an amateur band of musicians, posing as a more famous aggregation. They blunder into exclusive society, the presiding personality being Marie Dressler. Sally Blane is seen as her niece. A charity benefit with the pseudo-famous band as the big attraction is the crux of the plot, with the expose finally resulting in making Rudy's band famous under their own identities.
Sally Blane is lovely enough, but whether direction, dialogue or Sally is to blame, the fact remains that there is much to be desired in her performance. Certainly the dialogue wasn't any help to any of the cast. Danny O'Shea, Eddie Nugent and Norman Peck aid. Nella Walker is very good, with the rest of the cast, including Malcom Waite, Alan Roscoe and Charles Sellon.
There's a really fine vaudeville show at the RKO this week. One of the good, old-fashioned kind and very much worth seeing. There are Ruby Norton, Hal Neiman, "Dance Fahlies" (this is exceptional), Frederick Sylvester and Ray and Harrison.
2/7/1930 HDC Doris Denbo
Margin Mags, the Marie Dressler-Polly Moran comedy which they are working on at MGM will have the inimitable T.Roy Barnes (illegible). He will play the role of "Mr. Kidd," a typical tenant of the boarding house run by the buxom and talented Marie, a sheik at night but just a floor-walker in the daytime. Marie haas won a right to stardom with her unprecedented popularity since her recent screen appearances. Even in Anna Christie, the Greta Garbo masterpiece of construction and setting, she has been said on saveral occasions to steal even this picture. Marie is an actress at heart and be it straight character or broad comedy, she handles it with a master hand.
2/9/1930 FD Anna Christie
(All Talker)
MGM Time, 70 mins.
Intensely engrossing and drab drama of the waterfront. Garbo fascinating and convincing in her first talker. A wow for sophisticated audiences.
Based on Eugene O'Neill's play and produced as a picture some years ago with Blanche Sweet starred. Garbo displays a voice which is somewhat heavy and accented at times, but it is mellow and understandable. She gives a superb performance. Clarence Brown's sympathetic and painstaking direction is always evident. The story is that of a girl, embittered by her experiences with men, who joins her father, a drunken captain of a coal scow. A man they rescue from a raft falls in love with her and she returns his affection. Owing to her past, she feels that she cannot marry him. Cornered as to her reasons for refusing to marry, the girl tells her story. The man disillusioned, leaves but finally returns for a happy ending. Work of Charles Bickford, the lover; George F. Marion, the father, and Marie Dressler is splendid.
Cast, Greta Garbo, Charles Bickford, George F. Marion, Marie Dressler, Lee Phelps.
Director, Clarence Brown; Author, Eugene O'Neill; Adaptor, Frances Marion; Editor, Hugh Wynn; Dialoguer, Eugene O'Neill; Cameraman, William Daniels; Monitor Man, Douglas Shearer.
Direction, aces. Photography, beautiful.
2/12/1930 IDN MARIE DRESSLER IN SERIOUS MOOD AT FOX-CRITERION
By Eleanor Barnes
"I've been trouping in the films since the old nickelodeon days, but Marthy was my first serious screen characterization," said Marie Dressler, discussing her role in Anna Christie, now showing at the Fox Criterion Theater.
"It was a kick doing that bitter, cynical, drink-sodden waterfront hag," Miss Dressler continued, "You know I'd been doing slapstick comedy for so long I was a little bit afraid I might not be able to refrain from injecting a burlesque note into Marthy's character. At that, I guess she didn't escape wholly unscathed.
PHILOSOPHICAL
"Still, there's humor in life, isn't there. And so why shouldn't there be humor in Anna Christie?
"Even in that poor old wreck of a woman who craved only liquor and sneered at life, because she had found it utterly rotten. I'm glad if there is a little drab humor in the characterization—it's more real that way."
Miss Dressler's debut in pictures, however, was in a much lighter vein. This screen comedienne's first picture was Tillie's Punctured Romance, for Mack Sennett in the early days of the films and such now well-known comedians as Charlie Chaplin, Ben Turpin and Ford Sterling were in her supporting cast.
HER HISTORY
After that early comedy success, Miss Dressler made innumerable short comedies. Then she went back to her first love the stage, and amused hundreds of audiences in as many miscellaneous towns and cities over the entire country with her rare humor. Her fine, gay trouping. Her hilarious antics.
"I've spent almost 40 years on the stage and screen, in circuses, vaudeville, musical comedy troupes and other entertainment organizations," Miss Dressler muses reminiscently. "They've been grand years, too, filled with glorious memories, wonderful associations, marvelous friendships. I'm proud of those years, for they've made theatrical history and I've played a little part in making it."
AT MAJESTIC
Miss Dressler played her last stage role about a year and a half ago, when she essayed the role of "the queen" opposite Edward Everett Horton, in his production of Ferenc Molnar's "The Swan," which he produced at his downtown playhouse. Then she came back to the screen, appearing first in The Calahans and the Murphys, Then in Bringing Up Father.
The comedienne made a hit with her work in The Hollywood Revue, produced by MGM. Then, in rapid succession, she appeared in a series of characterizations in such films as The Swan, starring Lillian Gish; The Vagabond Lover, starring Rudy Vallee; Anna Christie, starring Greta Garbo; Road Show, co-featuring Charles King and Bessie Love, and The March of Time, MGM's old-timer's revue.
Now Miss Dressler and Polly Moran are making Margin Muggs, a burlesque on the recent stock market debacle. And after that, it is said MGM has several important and promising roles lined up for her.
2/16/1930 EH 25 Stars for Film Guild's Gambol:
Masters of Ceremonies include: Frank Fay, Jack Benny, Edmund Lowe, Ben Bard, Pat O'Malley, Neil Hamilton, Alan Hale and Eddie Hall, among others.
Cast includes Nancy Carroll, Marie Dressler, Polly Moran, Laurel and Hardy, Jack Oakie, James Gleason, Stepin Fetchit, Joe E. Brown and many others.
2/21/1930 HDC
Marie Dressler, inimitable screen comedienne, essays the role of an old opera singer in The Singer of Saville, Ramon Novarro's latest starring vehicle for the MGM studios.
2/28/1930 LAX Louella O. Parsons
You can't keep a good girl from getting the honors due her. Polly Moran, who has played everything from maid to female clown on the MGM lot, has just been signed on a long term contract by MGM, Polly is at this moment playing in Caught Short, a stock market comedy, with Marie Dressler. I hear tell that there will be other MGM comedies with Marie and Polly. The more the merrier, I say.
3/6/1930 LAX Louella O. Parsons
Marie Dressler doing a tipsy act for the publicity department at MGM.
3/5/1930 EH Ad for William Haines' film Girl Said No with Marie Dressler opens tomorrow with Polly Moran.
3/7/1930 IDN The Girl Said No
Well, The Girl Said No, but that didn't mean a thing to William Haines.
He won her anyway in his own boisterous manner and even though she was "no-ing" him to the very last, she had to finally give in to Billy's wishes and marry him or else endure some more of his clowning.
The entire story, however, is unfolded in a hilarious film at Loew's State Theater this week.
Hilarious is one of describing it. And sill, another. And come to think of it, silly is the ideal adjective to use in relating the latest Haines goings-on. The first half of the picture is rather bewildering to the spectator–he doesn't know who is crazy, he or the actors. Anyhow, it's all good fun, but certainly noisy and rowdy. And this writer defies anyone to keep a straight face under the persuasive comedy efforts of the amusing Mr. Haines.
DRAMATIC, TOO
Billy calms down in this picture long enough to prove that he can turn in a splendid dramatic performance. That is as serious as any Haines film could possibly be. Even the dramatic moments are watched with a questionable eye by the audience–they never know what moment Mr. Haines will break out with a befitting wisecrack.
Anyhow the few dramatic moments of the plot are met by Billy without worry, and he shows quite a flare for wistful characterizations.
One sequence stands out from all others. It is that dealing with Mr. Haines' efforts in trying to sell the obstinate Marie Dressler some bonds by getting her tipsy on alcohol. Here the fun reaches its wildest points and the scenes between Dressler and Haines will be remembered long after the remaining portions of the film are forgotten.
SIMPLE PLOT
The story is quite simple. Bill is the boy who should have been locked up by his family in an asylum before they ever allowed him to burst forth into the world with his stock of tricks and wise remarks. He meets a girl and wins her after she tries her best to avoid him. And he also triumphs over the rival in a business deal and happiness is complete. Sam Wood directed and let Haines run riot in various sequences by permitting him to lose his trousers, talk baby talk, pout and make silly faces and generally create havoc.
Leila Hyams is the girl in the case and delivers a thoroughly charming delineation. Francis Bushman Jr. is the villain and is convincing. Wilbur Mack makes his few scenes stand out, and there are capable performances turned in by Clara Blandick, William Janney, William Mong and Polly Moran. As for Marie Dressler! Well, she's just a riot, that all.
Eddie Peabody is featured in Fanchon & Marco's "Coral Idea" and engages in some neat banjo plunking. And the Royal Samoans, Frank Duc, LaPetite Marie and the Sunkist Beauties, not forgetting George Stoll and band, help to make the stage entertainment amusing and tuneful.
3/7/1930 EH The Girl Said No
By W.E. Oliver
The man who is timid about his love making should be all means see William Haines this week at Loew's State in The Girl Said No. This gifted farceur takes after his girl like a fox hound and at times with the lack of repression displayed by a Cossack.
I say gifted farceur because William Haines is fast developing into the best light comedian on the screen.
In this picture he is given limitless scope for his impudent talents, although he is humbled in time to be brought under the winning tape in good odor.
VIEWPOINT PLAYFUL
He is seen as the college graduate, Tom Ward, home and facing life with his playful viewpoint still unabashed.
He remains undisconcerted until he meets Mary Howe, in the person of Leila Hyams, and after a tenacious courthip that trails uproariously through night clubs, in and out of automobiles and into the bond office where she is employed, the girl still says no.
His father dies and he is thrown out of the gilded class to make his own way. But the highly-charged personality that brought about discomfiture in this heart affair sells a million or so dollar bond issue to the firm's hardest customer and he abducts the girl from his rival right under the parson's nose.
Sam Wood, the director, has performed the same, sure, flippant, polished services for this picture that he did for So This Is College. Its spirit results from the direction as much as from the fine work of Haines and his cast.
I defy you to laugh harder at anything than his scenes with Marie Dressler, that is if the censors haven't acted before you have time to get down to Loew's State.
Leila Hyams and Phyllis Crane each do a very creditable assignment in the picture. Polly Moran contributes to the glee as the servant.
CAST IS GOOD
Others in the cast are William V. Mong, Junior Coghlan, Francis X. Bushman Jr., and Willard Mack. They are all good.
The dialogue, which I understand is by Charles MacArthur, is as clever and natural–a welcome symptom of the stage dialoguist boring within.
Eddie Peabody is back on familiar grounds again as part of the Fanchon and Marco stage act, "Coral," this week. His lukewarm welcome yesterday developed to a mild riot when he quit fiddling about some newfangled instrument he and brought out with him and twanged some stirring melodies in the banjo. There is no question about his robust virtuosity on this instrument.
The Heart Metrotone News and Fashion News are included on the bill.
The Girl Said No. Directed by Sam Wood. Opened March 6, 1930.
CAST: William Haines, Leila Hyams, William V. Mong, Junior Coghlan, Francis X. Bushman, Polly Moran, Marie Dressler and Wilbur Mack.
3/7/1930 LAX The Girl Said No
By Gregory Goss
Adulation, like some "liquid refreshment," has a stimulating effect, William Haines as a young fellow just out of college finds difficulty in adjusting himself to the time-clock and other symbols of the commercial world in The Girl Said No, at Loew's State. The action of this rollicking comedy directed by Sam Wood may be said to be a sobering up after a campus hangover of flattery.
Haines as Tom Ward has been the life of every party during his four years in pursuit of higher education. He is so filled with the zest of living that responsibilities are dismissed as the chief non-essentials of existence.
Of course, the day of reckoning comes and Ward meets the issues with little evasion. Haines does good work in tempering the exuberant spirit of the character with solemnity when the occasion merits. His comedy scenes are riotous and those with the Ward family after the death of the father are played with an unsuspected poise.
In addition to its good direction, The Girl Said No is particularly well cast. Lelia Hyams again proves attractive as Haines' leading woman. Ralph Bushman is a splendid foil for the comedy pranks, and the family, consisting of William V. Mong, Clara Blandick, Phyllis Crane, William Janney and Junior Coghlan, attracts interest and sympathy.
While Marie Dressler and Polly Moran are not "teamed" as they have been in many a recent picture, they as individuals are important to the scheme of things. The former is a wealthy spinster to whom Haines tries to sell bonds. This scene, though brief, has the TNT to make the house rock. Polly is the faithful maid of all work in the Ward household sharing their vicissitudes in the most matter-of-fact fashion.
Appearing in the Fanchon and Marco "Coral Idea" is Eddie Peabody. The diminutive banjoist plays selections from "Rio Rita" and "Sunnyside Up." Then he asks for "requests." With one accord the audience at the opening performance demanded "The St Louis Blues." And Peabody gave it with all the vigorous rhythm that has made the piece peculiarly his own.
3/7/1930 EH WILLIAM HAINES WISECRACKS HIS COURTSHIP WAY
If you marry me, you man have an awful tough time, but you'll never be bored."
Nobody but William Haines could say that to a girl and make her believe it. Unless perhaps it is Eddie Peabody. He is back at Lowe's State Theater this week, yellow bangs, flared trousers, banjo, pep, and all the rest.
His year's absence makes the old tunes better and the new ones unbeatable. As usual, there isn't time enough for him to do justice to his harmonics or the audience's demands.
William Haines, however, is the real author of the wooing promise in his convulsive comic, The Girl Said No. When a picture stars with the time-honored finis, race between the roadster and the train, that speed is only a foretaste of the running comedy of a smart-cracker winning a girl who had definitely said no.
Haines is the same as ever. This time the loss of the family wealth through the father's death serves to straighten out the high-pressure, hey-hey boy; in fact, to give him his birthright as a salesman.
Meantime, however, he has to get out of the way a successful rival who can offer the poor working-girl a good home. (She, by the way, is only a steno, but she lives in a palatial apartment, and needs a home badly, she says).
The girl who could resist this clever kid is a strange sort, in another way. She can say no to the man she thinks she loves and say yes to the man she knows she does not. But Leila Hyams is a gorgeous blonde, so she can be forgiven for her strange evidences of perverse backbone and allowed to succumb to the rollicking here.
Why the ridiculous antics of pouring onion soup down a man's neck, meowing in a cafe at a man who orders milk, or carrying the waiting-room bench into the secretary's office are funny isn't quite clear. But they are piled up fast and climaxed by getting Marie Dressler drunk, they cannot offer laugh resistance to Haines' sales talk.
He is not the only funster. He is aided and abetted by Marie Dressler as the tight-fisted millionairess whom he 'sells,' Polly Moran, the leather-tongued, gold-hearted servant girl, one and two waiters, who get some laughs principally by non-understandable but expressive volubility.
The Coral "idea" of Fanchon and Marco conception makes a colorful milieu for a revue of girls, dances, and knife-swinging south sea islanders, even though a satin-breeched and bewigged tenor presides over the finale.
3/10/1930 LAX Louella O. Parsons
New York, March 9.—The plans for Let Us Be Gay, Norma Shearer's final MGM picture, are of more than passing interest, first, because it will be Norma's last picture for a long time and, secondly, because as a stage play it was so tremendously popular. I hear tell the details of the cast from one of my Sherlock Holmes scouts, or shall I call him Philo Vance, and be up to date.
Rod LaRocque, ‘tis said, will play opposite Miss Shearer. His role is the divorced husband who is in love with his ex-wife. This situation, as you will recall, in the play, is brought about by a witty old dowager, and will be played by Marie Dressler. The granddaughter she seeks to protect will be in the hands of Sally Eilers.
This is Sally's first job on the MGM lot, and the first time she and Hoot Gibson have separated in their work since their engagement was announced.
3/11/1930 EH Marie Dressler Steals More Comedy Honors
Marie Dressler's splendid comedy interpretation during the last few months rank her as the season's leading comedienne.
During the last month she has "stolen" comedy honors in three major attractions. Her latest work in William Haines' comedy The Girl Said No, now playing at Loew's State, is declared to excel her comic efforts in Anna Christie and the Hollywood Revue.
3/18/1930 HDC Doris Denbo
Marie Dressler, out there at MGM is going in for both comedy and character roles, and she fits equally well into each. This time she has been signed for the role of the peppy and irritated dowager in Let Us Be Gay. This should be a marvelous part for the talented and beloved Marie. This is Norma Shearer's last picture before temporary retirement. Rod La Roque plays opposite. Sally Eilers, Hedda Hopper, Raymond Hackett, Tyrell Davis and Gilbert Emory are in support.
Labels: Buddy DeSylva, Gary Cooper, Marie Dressler, Marion Davies
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