Maureen O'Sullivan In the 30's
1/26/1934 HCN Elizabeth Yeaman
Irene Dunne and Richard Dix will not have a monopoly on the limelight in Stingaree, even though they will get co-starring billing on the picture. Stingaree now rises as practically an all-star production. A deal is expected to be signed today for Mary Boland, Paramount star, to play one of the featured roles in the picture of Australian locale. Or that might have changed the locale by this time, you can never tell about these screen adaptations. And Radio Pictures also is paying out heavy telephone toll calls to London in an effort to get Leslie Banks for another big featured role in this same picture. Banks originally was brought to Hollywood by this studio, and made one picture here, I believe.
Mary Boland is said to have the right, under the terms of her Paramount contract, to negotiate one picture deal with an outside company during the year. Paramount keeps her so busy that she surely does not have much time to think about outside work, but this role in Stingaree is practically set for her. William Wellman, the director noted for his vigorous dramatic speed when he was under contract to Warners, will direct Stingaree. And Irene Dunne, whose singing voice scarcely has been heard on the screen, will portray the role of an opera singer.
....
Warners change their on cast assignments without a qualm. Last night the studio previewed As the Earth Turns at the Warner Beverly Theater and as a result of the enthusiasm for Donald Woods, who plays the male lead, they have reached a sudden decision to put Woods into this role. Talbot has been working in the picture for a week, and the studio says another assignment will be found for him. The studio also changed the title of the picture again. This time it is Fog Over San Francisco. Since this is the fourth change in the title of the picture, let's hope the this title sticks. It seems that the Warners believe that Donald Woods is destined for immediately stardom, and they want to rush him before the public in as many pictures as possible. In the brief time that he has been under contract he has appeared in As the Earth Turns and The Merry Wives of Reno.
....
While I was on the subject of Stingaree and the stars being sought for this production, I neglected to mentioned that Andy Devine has been signed for a featured role in this picture. On the call sheets also is the name of Snub Pollard. It has been years since I have seen Pollard on the screen, and this assignment may forecast a real comeback for him. Incidentally, the signing of these two players indicates some comedy angles for the picture.
....
Constance Cummings reports for work at once for the lead in Glamour at Universal. And that assignment heralded quite a flood of offers from other companies. Columbia has given her the script of The Most Precious Thing In Life. This offers her the role of the mother who ages throughout the long period of time. Karen Morley and Colleen Moore both were considered for the part. Connie also is almost set to play the role of the wife in Springtime For Henry, the play which her husband, Benn W. Levy, wrote and which will reach the screen at Fox. Levy is now at the latter studio working on the screen adaptation.
....
That contract which Gloria Swanson is supposed to sign with Irving Thalberg at MGM is still under fire. Money terms and selection of a story will have to be decided signatures go on the contract. A rumor is out that Gloria may play the much disputed feminine lead with Maurice Chevalier in The Merry Widow. Jeanette MacDonald and Joan Crawford are hardly discussed for the part any more. But then there is also talk that Lilian Harvey and Evelyn Laye would be right for the part. Positive selection of an actress should be made very soon now.
....
Before Busby Berkeley wins a chance to start as a dramatic director, he will first have to do duty once more in staging a big musical sequences. Warners have completed the Dick Powell picture Hot Air, and they decided that what the picture needs is a smash musical finale. So Berkeley is assigned to do the job.
....
As mild interest in fantasies continues, word comes that Fox contemplates making a talkie remake of Dante's Inferno. The story was made as a silent picture by Fox in 1924.
Maureen O'Sullivan In the 30's
ABBREVIATIONS
DN – Daily News
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
IDN – Illustrated Daily News
LAR – Los Angeles Record
LAPR – Los Angeles Post-Record
LAX – Los Angeles Examiner
MPH – Motion Picture Herald
SFC – San Francisco Chronicle
1/12/1930 EH Harrison Carroll
Maureen O'Sullivan leaves here on the 25th for Ireland, where she'll visit her home. Because of her Fox contract, she'll have no trouble re-entering the country. The government permits foreign players to return as long as they are signed to a studio.
3/16/1930 FD Song O' My Heart
(All-Talker)
Fox 1 hr., 25 mins.
A box office certainty. Good acting by McCormack. Excellent recording of his voice, together with beautiful photography.
Perhaps the outstanding merit of this picture, and one that will cause much surprised comment which in turn will be profitable advertising, is the fact that John McCormack's famous tenor voice is reproduced so naturally and so pleasingly. Against the background of a simple but fitting sentimental story, McCormack sings about a dozen well chosen songs, enough to satisfy the expectations of the class of audience he is most likely to draw. Other vales of the picture include some thoroughly enjoyable comedy by J.M. Kerrigan and Farrell MacDonald, a feast of scenic beauty and gracefully directed action. Director, cameraman and sound engineer share in a technical triumph. Injection of juvenile interest is accomplished through a talented youngster.
Cast: John McCormack, Alice Joyce, Maureen O'Sullivan, J.M. Kerrigan, John Garrick, Tommy Clifford, Farrell MacDonald, Effie Elisler, Emily Fitzroy, Edwin Schneider, Endreas de Segurola, Edward Martindel.
Director, Frank Borzage; Author, Tom Barry; Adaptor, Sonya Levien; Dialoguer, Not Listed; Editor, Margaret Clancy; Cameraman, Chester Lyons; Monitor Man, G.P. Costello.
Direction, Excellent. Photography, Superb.
4/21/1930 LAR Song of My Heart
Grauman's Chinese—John MaCormack in Song of My Heart, by Tom Barry. Directed by Frank Borzage. Mack Sennett comedy, He Trumped Her Ace.
By Llewellyn Miller
When first that lovely, easy tenor of John McCormack's came with effortless sweetness from the screen of Grauman's Chinese Theater the audience knew that Song of My Heart was worth the money.
The story proved to be a slender thread, a simple unaffected tale, rather tenuous, but strong enough to provide a suitable background for the 11 songs that the famous tar sings.
The charming, direct delivery that marks McCormack's appearances on the concert stage is the most distinguished thing about his acting. It is natural, unpretentious, without any attempt at the usual stage tricks for emphasis. And it is to the everlasting credit of Fox that a win-the-girl romance was not wished off on him.
Much of the quality of the film is undoubtedly due to the direction by Frank Borzage who has maintained a directness and a quiet sentimentality throughout the story of an enduring love in a sleepy little Irish village.
McCormack plays Sean who has cherished a love for Mary for half a life time. Mary, played by Alice Joyce, had been forced to marry for money by a stern, iron-jawed aunt. Emily Fitzroy plays that part with the rigorous grimness for which she is justly noted.
Mary and her two children, Eileen and Tad, eventually find themselves without means of existence. Unaccustomed to poverty, Mary is helpless, and returns to her aunt, who immediately sets about breaking up Eileen's romance with a penniless young man.
Sean, feeling that something must be done to help the woman he loves, consents to a concert tour in America, though we are given to understand that he had put his career behind him when Mary married.
Slight, certainly, that plot is, but remember that there are plenty of easily contrived opportunities for McCormack to sing, which after all, is the point of the picture.
He gives "Then You'll Remember Me" as he sits in a shadowy room in his little cottage. Another song is sung to a group of children beside a little river, that, though just like any other river in the world manages to be as convincingly Irish as are the jaunting cars, the rich accents and the grandly Irish faces that grace the extras. Another song is heard in a little church.
He is shown singing "Lought Sereni E Cari," "Little Boy Blue," "Ireland, Mother Ireland" and "I Hear You Calling Me" from a concert stage. It was for the last two that the audience insisted upon giving a spontaneous, enthusiastic tribute of prolonged applause. Clapping marked the close of every song, for the recording is superb, and allows the sweetness of the voice to be heard, but for those two, the response was particularly marked.
Other songs are: "A Fairy Story by the Fire," "Just For Today," "I Felt You Near Me," "Kitty, My Love," "The Rose of Tralee" and "A Pair of Blue Eyes."
Farrell MacDonald and J.M. Kerrigan play a pair of battling cronies and supply a good part of the comedy with some fine, old, straight-from-the-shoulder Irish fighting words. Effie Ellsler has a secure spot in the credit lines for her work as Sean's foster mother; Tommy Clifford, a youngster, who has the whole map of Ireland under the freckles on his face, is sure to be kept busy providing comedy interest in the next years.
Maureen O'Sullivan plays Eileen. John Garrick is her young sweetheart, and Andreas De Sergurola, Edwin Schneider and Edward Martindel are featured.
The picture employs one old trick of silent films that it could very well have avoided. That is when a leaf flutters down past a window. Everyone knows that when an invalid is sitting beside the window and the leaves begin to fall that the news is being broken gently that the grim reaper is near. It is a fairly well known symbol, and most audiences will feel rather talked down to.
Song of My Heart should prove particularly fine matinee material, but if you don't like crowds of women, it is just as good at night, for McCormack's voice is one of the rare fine experiences that you will get from the screen.
4/21/1930 HDC Song O' My Heart
By Elizabeth Yeaman
All the favorite songs which John McCormack has made famous are included in his first talking picture, Song O' My Heart, which was given its western premiere Saturday night at the Chinese Theater. The sound recording of this Fox special is well nigh perfect, and when the Irish tenor sings "I Hear You Calling Me," "Little Boy Blue," "Just For Today," and "Then You'll Remember Me," the effect is much the same as when he appears on the concert stage.
No effort has been spared to make McCormack the whole show in this romance, much of which was filmed in his native Ireland. He sings eleven songs in all, and the story has been sacrificed in order to find opportunity to introduce these vocal numbers. But in spite of the fact that everyone loves to hear McCormack sing, it is rather a pity that his ballads cold not have been worked into the story with more subtlety.
NO SLIGHT INTENDED
It is not plausible that a director as able as Frank Borzage would deliberately have slighted this story from the pen of Tom Berry. It is more probable that the picture, when completed, was much too long, and since the production features John McCormack, much of the romantic background was slashed out in the cutting room. This explanation would account for the lack of continuity which made some of the scenes rather choppy and abrupt. The genius of Borzage is apparent, however, especially in the shots of "Little Boy Blue," which made the song much more heart-stirring than any vocal rendition could be without this pictorial accompaniment.
It is Maureen O'Sullivan, a newcomer to the screen, who contributes one of the most sympathetic interpretations of romantic innocence that has been seen in a long time. Miss O'Sullivan was recruited in Ireland, and the acting of this beautiful youngster has a freshness and naturalness that is entirely lacking in affectation. The audience would have enjoyed seeing more of her.
BOY IS DELIGHTFUL
Tommy Clifford, an engaging little scamp also direct from Ireland, was indispensable to the comedy of the picture. Master Tommy managed to combine naivete and shrewdness in an inimitable manner and his voice and accent were perfect.
Other character roles were excellently portrayed by John Garrick, J.M. Kerrigan, Farrell MacDonald, Effie Ellsler and Emily Fitzroy.
Some clever technique was introduced in the scenes of McCormack's concert triumph in the United States. The applause of his film audience provoked applause in the real audience, thus heightening the realism of his ovation. Another artistic effect was created when McCormack was rehearsing in church, while Alice Joyce listened outside. The song coming from the church carried the echo of a voice in an empty building.
Song O' My Heart, probably will have a tremendous box office success, for McCormack's admirers are legion, and his beautiful voice largely counteracts his lack of proficiency as an actor.
5/2/1930 HDC GALA REVUE SLATED FOR CHINESE MIDNITE SHOW
John Garrick, leading man in Song O' My Heart, Noel Frances, Irene Day and Frances McCoy have been added to the cast of stars who will appear in person at the midnight frolic tomorrow at Grauman's Chinese Theater in conjunction with the showing of the John McCormack picture.
Other stars previously announced to appear in the revue include Maureen O'Sullivan and Tommy Clifford, featured members of the cast of Song O' My Heart, Dixie Lee, popular Fox singing star, Leslie Mae, eccentric dancer, George Corcoran, comedian, and Abe Lyman and his band in new song and dance numbers.
A number of Fox stars and studio officials have announced their intention of attending this gala midnight show, and seats are now available for all performances at the local box offices.
5/3/1930 EE MOVIEAD "Midnite Frolic" on stage at 11:45pm at showing of Song O' My Heart
Maureen O'Sullivan, Tommy Clifford, Dixie Lee, Abe Lyman and His Band scheduled to appear.
5/3/1930 LAX AT CHINESE TONIGHT
Midnight matinees are to be resumed tonight at Grauman's Chinese Theater. Participating in this first event, to take place during the engagement of Song of My Heart, are a number of celebrities from the Fox Studios.
Maureen O'Sullivan and Tommy Clifford, who are seen with John McCormack in the motion picture feature, are on the list of entertainers. Others announced are "Whispering" Jack Smith, Richard Keene, Roger Davis, Dixie Lee, Francis McCoy, Leslie Mae and George "Red" Corcoran.
Abe Lyman and his band will also be part of the program.
5/10/1930 EH MAUREEN'S IRISH EYES HAVE IT
By Edward Stodel
When Irish eyes are smiling--well, the eyes have it.
You know, there's been an influx of French, German, Swedish, Spanish, Italian and Austrian eyes to Hollywood during the past few years. Many of them have acquired considerable luster, too. But, strange to say, we can not recall a representative from the land of the shamrocks. How about the famous Irish eyes?
It took Frank Borzage to settle the situation. For it was he who discovered Maureen O'Sullivan while in Dublin in the quest of a typically modern colleen to play the girl with John McCormack in Song o' My Heart. And so Maureen came to Hollywood.
THE EYES HAVE IT
Naturally we were wondering, before meeting Maureen this week, just how the Irish eyes would answer to their reputation. What's that they say about "you can hear the angels singin?" Well, we didn't hear any celestial voices, but we still say----the Irish eyes have it, and plenty of it.
Maureen's eyes are the blue of the lakes of Kiliney where she spent her childhood. She was born in Boyle.
Seven months in Hollywood has not detracted from her native charm. Yes, they speak English in Ireland, but even though Maureen has been schooled in London and Paris, she still retains a delightful flavor in her voice distinctive of her countrymen.
TRIES EXPERIMENT
I thought it would be an interesting experiment to see what a youthful newcomer to Hollywood from across the big water thinks of our flaming youth. Thus to make a novel interview of it, we had dinner, danced and then attended a play which was sponsored by a college sorority.
Our deduction was that youth is the same the world over.
"Hollywood has a frightful reputation in England," Maureen told me as we danced. (She's a good dancer, by the way, and she didn't have to come all the way over here to learn.) "From the stories I heard before I left home, you would have thought I was going to the land of sin itself.
"When I got here, I was surprised. The fellows and girls acted normal. They did the same sort of things at affairs that we did at home. The American boy, perhaps, is not as reserved when he meets a girl as is the Britisher, but he is just as nice. The other day I introduced a friend from London to a girl at the studio. He merely said, "How do you do." The girl complained to me later that he was cold and distant, in fact trying to be snobbish, but I'm sure he wasn't."
Later on we passed Grauman's Chinese theater, where Song o' My Heart is now playing. The crowds were just filing out.
Joking, Maureen said: "That's an awful picture, I hear, they say this new Irish girl, O'Sullivan, is terrible." She has an Irish sense of humor, all right, and her laugh--well, it matches her eyes.
"Seriously, though," I asked her, "don't you wish you could hear what they think of you?"
"I do and I don't," she replied. "I'd like to know so as to help myself without being conscious of it. I'm afraid I'd be too sensitive, I couldn't bear sitting next to a person and hear him say something uncomplimentary, but if it was constructive I'd like to know."
Maureen is alone here now. Her mother left her recently for home. She has a short vacation now but can not leave America because she would not be able to get back in again on the quota.
Her ambitions are to save a thousand pounds and to have been on all continents before she is 21. She has two years to go.
Meanwhile her Irish eyes are smiling--and that's no blarney.
5/10/1930 EE Actor Horde At Studio Reveals Broadway Raid
By Victor Shapiro
Seventy-one players are included on the new contract list of the Fox studios in Hollywood and Westwood, made known by Sol. M. Wurtzel, general superintendent, and make an impressive showing of Hollywood's "raid" on Broadway and reveal its crippling effect on Eastern stage productions.
There are also seven associate producers, nineteen directors, one stage director, twenty-seven writers, sixteen composers, five dance and ensemble directors, thirty-four dancers, twenty-four singers, two fashion creators, a test director, a music teacher and numerous other officials and technical experts.
The actors include John McCormack, Warner Baxter, William Collier, Charles Farrell, Edmund Lowe, Victor McLaglen, Will Rogers, Don Jose Mojica, Milton Sills, Frank Albertson, Robert Ames, Edwin Bartlett, Rex Bell, Humphrey Bogart, El Brendel, Robert Burns, Walter Catlett, Thomas Clifford, John Garrick, George Rossmith, William Harrigan, Mitchell Harris, Ted Healy, Gus Howard, Warren Hymer, Richard Keene, J.M. Kerrigan, Kenneth MacKenna, Paul Muni, J. Harold Murray, George O'Brien, Tom Patricola, Nat Pendleton, Frank Richardson, David Rollins, John Swor, Lee Tracy, Henry Victor, John Wayne and Charles Winninger.
The actresses include Janet Gaynor, Lois Moran, Beatrice Lillie, Luana, Alcaniz, Lucille Brown, Ilka Chase, Marguerite Churchill, Mae Clark, Joyce Compton, Irene Day, Fifi Dorsay, Noel Francis, Althea Heinly, Rose Hobart, Louise Huntington, Roxanne Curtis, Elizabeth Keating, Helen Keating, Dixie Lee (Bing Crosby), Claire Luce, Sharon Lynn, Leslie Mae, Mona Maris, Frances McCoy, Goodie Montgomery, Maureen O'Sullivan, Jillian Sand, Marie Saxon, Marjorie White and Ruth Warren.
The only male players who did not come to motion pictures with stage experience are Farrell, Albertson, Bell, Clifford, O'Brien, Rollins and Wayne. Miss Compton and Miss O'Sullivan are the only feminine players on the list who have not had stage training.
Contract writers included Tom Barry, Samuel H. Behrman, Andrew Bennison, Edwin Burke, Homer Croy, Earl Crooker, Owen Davis Sr., Hal G. Evarts, Jules Furthman, Frank Gay, Tom Geraghty, Rube Goldberg, Howard Green, Norman Hall, Llewellyn Hughes, Harry Johnson, Sonya Levien, Russell Medcraft, Dudley Nichols, Marton Orth, Ernest Pascal, Gen. Aylesworth Perry, Willard Robertson, Lynn Starling, Hayden Talbot, Harlan Thompson and Maureen Watkins.
The directors are John G. Blystone, Frank Borzage, David Butler, Irving Cummings, A.F. Erickson, Victor Fleming, John Ford, William K. Howard, Alexander Korda, Sidney Lanfield, Hamilton MacFadden, Leo McCarey, Guthrie McClintic, Alfred Santell, Chandler Sprague, Benjamin Stoloff, Berthold Viertel, Raoul Walsh and Alfred Werker.
Melville Burke is the only stage director.
The associate producers are Ralph Block, E.W. Butcher, Harold Lipstiz, Ned Marin, J.K. McGuinness, George Middleton and Al Rockett.
The list of composers numbers Buddy de Sylva, Lew Brown, Ray Henderson, Joseph McCarthy, Ray Henderson, Joseph McCarthy, James Hanley, James Monaco, William Kernell, Albert H. Malotte, Richard Fall, Grace Henry, Morris Hamilton, Cliff Friend, George Gershwin, Ira Gershwin, Jean Schwartz and Troy Sanders.
Joseph Urban is creator of settings and Sophie Wachner is fashion creator, assisted by Dolly Tree.
John Stone is editor of the silent pictures department; Jack Gardner is casting director; Joseph W. Reilly is director of safety; Ben Jackson is manager of the music department; Rolla Flora has charge of movietone effects; Barney Wolf heads the cutting department, with Charles Dudley as chief cosmetician, and Ben Wurtzel in charge of the maintenance department.
5/12/1930 EH Screenographs
By Harrison Carroll
Rumors that Charles Farrell and Janet Gaynor will be separated as a screen team gain credence from the assignment of Fox's new Irish star, Maureen O'Sullivan, to play opposite Farrell in The Princess and the Plumber.
This is to be a film version of Alice Duer Miller's novel of the same name.
Miss O'Sullivan, whose sweet charm was one of the features of Song o' My Heart, will be seen as a princess with a mortgaged castle. Farrell is the young American pluming engineer who comes out to see about modernizing the place.
Since the John McCormick picture Miss O'Sullivan has appeared with Will Rogers in So This is London. They like her work very much out Fox way.
5/14/1930 LAR Jimmy Starr
Maureen O'Sullivan, pretty little Irish miss who made a distinct hit in Song O' My Heart, is causing quite a number of male heart flutterings.
William Bakewell shakes all over at the mere mention of her name, and Frank Albertson admits his pulse leaps when she's near.
It seems that Frank introduced Maureen to Billy when they were dining at a café. The topper of the gag was that he walked out with Maureen and left Billy with the dinner check.
5/25/1930 FD So This is London
Fox 1 hr., 32 mins.
Sure box-office bet. With Will Rogers in fine form. Full of pungent humor. First-rate cast.
So, This is London, based on the George M. Cohan play, is certain to make Will Rogers more popular than ever. The philosophic comedian is practically the whole show. All the way through there is a strong suspicion that more than a few of the lines are his own. There is too much of that pungent humor, droll wisdom and observant quality about them to be identified with anyone else. The star holds the audience in the palm of his hand in a performance that is unstudied and human to the extreme. For there has been weaved into the film a tender love idyll in which figure Frank Albertson and Maureen O'Sullivan. The film shows Rogers as an anti-British American who is thrown in with a group of anti-American English folk. This animosity almost breaks up a romance between his son and an English girl. Everything, however, ends happily when prejudices are forgotten on both sides.
CAST: Will Rogers, Irene Rich, Frank Albertson, Maureen O'Sullivan, Lumdsen Hare, Mary Forbes, Bramwell Fletcher, Dorothy Christie, Ellen Woodston, Martha Lee Sparks.
Director, John Blystone; Author, Arthur Goodrich; Adaptors, Owen Davis Sr.; Editor, Jack Bennis; Cameraman, Charles Clarke; Monitor Man, Frank MacKenzie.
Direction, Good. Photography, Good.
6/20/1930 LAR So This Is London
Fox Carthay Circle–Will Rogers in So This Is London, with Irene Rich, Frank Albertson, Lumsden Hare, Maureen O'Sullivan, Bramwell Fletcher, Dorothy Christie and Mary Forbes. Screen version of George M. Cohan's play, directed by John Blystone. The Dogville Murder Case, an all-barkie comedy. Abe Lyman and his band, with Skin Young, soloist.
By Llewellyn Miller
Will Rogers, the sage of the southwest, the oracle of Oklahoma, ex-mayor of Beverly Hills, present ambassador at large from Claremore, chewing gum champion and man-about-the-air, took to the screen at the Fox Carthay Circle last night in So This Is London.
Though the film is not quite the high comedy caliber of They Had to See Paris, the brilliant first night audience, which had come to chuckle, remained to give rounds of laughter for Rogers' drawled wisecracks.
He plays Hiram Draper, stubbornly anti-British Yankee who gets "Farther away from home than the barn for the first time" when he takes his wife and son to England to complete the purchase of a cotton mill.
"Does Dad still hate the English, just because they're English?" asks Junior, who has fallen in love with Elinor, a British girl, on the way over.
"He says he hates them just because they're not Americans," explains Mrs. Draper with a certain amused air of resignation.
Elinor's parents are no less opinionated about the citizens of the United States. "Vulgar people, always chewing gum and talking about money," says Lord Percy Worthing bitterly when he finds that he has been snared into a weekend at Lady Amy Duckworth's house with the despised visitors from across the big pond.
Those who saw George M. Cohan's play on the stage will be mildly surprised that the two funniest scenes have been cut from the film, especially since they were written in the perfect flashback tradition of the movies. These are the sequences where each contemptuous family is shown as the other imagines it, as comic strip caricatures of British bounders and American upstarts.
Instead the Hiram Drapers actually pretend to be as bad as the Worthings think they are, and very nearly ruin their son's romance with their convincing performance. Will Rogers slides down the bannisters, goes into an Indian war dance as an exhibition of American whoopee spirit unleashed for a party. Irene Rich, as the charming Mrs. Draper, puts her hands on her hips, achieves a swagger that would be an adornment to any small time chorus girl, and shakes hands with a free and easy bluster.
It takes an afternoon of steady imbibing on the shooting ground to level the antagonisms of the heads of the family.
Will Rogers has plenty of opportunity to drawl dry comments on the current American scene, and as a drawler, he is my favorite, so the film seems to have plenty to recommend it. John Blystone directed.
Irene Rich is gracious and charming, as always. Frank Albertson is directly boyish as their son. Maureen O'Sullivan plays the English daughter with a delightful Irish accent. Dorothy Christie and Bramwell Fletcher are good in smaller roles. Mary Forbes plays the anxiously acquiescent Lady Worthing. Lumsden Hare, very funny in himself, is directed for such deliberate tempo that the film tends to drag in spots where he and Will Rogers try to beat each other at being inarticulate.
The Dogville Murder Case is a travesty of all of the mystery thrillers. It is acted entirely by dogs who have been chosen for type with an almost inspired selectiveness.
Abe Lyman's band, better than ever, gives an all too short program, featuring "Skin" Young's trick voice in a solo.
The funniest spot in the film is saved for the last scene. The tune which serves both nations so well starts. While Sir Percy intones "God Save the King," Hiram Draper bravely begins "My Country ‘Tis of Thee" in a rather mournful howl, only to have the words of the second verse evade him, as they have so many good Americans before him.
That scene alone makes the film worth seeing.
6/20/1930 LAX So This Is London
By Louella O. Parsons
Will Rogers says a few good words about the English in So This Is London just in time to save us from international complications. So expert a diplomat as Mr. Rogers could be depended upon to save this precarious situation even on the screen. The Rogers champions, those who love his whimsical humor and his philosophy, gathered at Carthay Circle Theater last night to take a look at this latest Rogers comedy.
While So This is London is not as typically a Rogers story as They Had to See Paris, and while it lacks the pathetic situations of Mr. Rogers' first Fox offering, there is no mistaking the quality of the humor.
There is one big laugh from the time Will Rogers arrives in London, with a terrific hate in his heart for all things British, until he and the English get together. The lines given him are especially good. I did not see the stage play by Arthur Goodrich when George M. Cohan produced it in New York, so I have no way of knowing where Goodrich's comedy ends and Rogers' begins. I should be willing, however, to wager that much of the dialogue is Will's own. It sounds like him.
Owen Davis Sr., no amateur when it comes to furnishing dialogue, is credited with the adaptation. That's another reason, probably, why it's good. John Blystone, one of the newer directors, gave a good account of himself.
The unembellished story is trite and simple enough. An English girl meets an American boy on shipboard and they fall in love. His father hates the English and his father is equally bitter against the Americans. There you have the plot in a nutshell.
Frank Albertson as that boy, the son of Hiram Draper (Will Rogers), is an attractive youth with a pleasing screen personality. The girl, Maureen O'Sullivan, admittedly Irish, easily passes for an English girl. I like her much better, in fact, in So This Is London than I did in the John McCormack picture. She seems to have profited from her experience before the camera. There is a youngness about her and a sweetness that is pleasing.
Mr. Rogers might have looked the whole world over for a leading lady and not found one with the charm and grace of Irene Rich. She is perfect in this part and her comedy, even though necessarily broad in several scenes with Mr. Rogers, is excellent.
Lumsden Hare does a burlesque on the English that is more exaggerated than any cartoon ever published. His drawling voice, his monocle, his drooping mustaches are all in accordance with the comedy idea. Mary Forbes as the gracious English lady is well cast. Bramwell Fletcher is adequate but not outstanding. One of the outstanding. One of the outstanding performance is given by Dorothy Christy. She makes her first appearance on the screen in this picture.
The entertainment value of So This Is London is all anyone can ask. Mr. Rogers is delightfully humorous and excellently human, so much so we do not feel at any time he is acting. That is the best tribute I can give him.
In addition to Mr. Rogers' picture, there were Abe Lyman and his orchestra. When you say Abe Lyman, that is synonymous with good music. His orchestra with Skin Young as soloist, put over some tuneful numbers, among them two negro spirituals that got a hand.
An all-barkie comedy, The Dogville Murder Case, directed by Zion Myers is extremely amusing. This and a Fox Movietone Newsreel completed the program. Frank Albertson and Will Rogers Jr. were outdoors at the microphone. The young "Bill" apparently hasn't his father's shyness at openings for he seemed right at home.
6/24/1930 HDC Elizabeth Yeaman
DeSylva, Brown and Henderson's second musical production for Fox goes into production today with David Butler directing. This picture, titled Just Imagine, is laid in old New York and the days of high bicycles, hansome cabs, horse drawn busses, gas lamps, cobble stone pavements and horse cars. Several hundred extras are working in the preliminary atmospheric shots, and several thousand more will be used in later sequences. Despite its preliminary scenes, Just Imagine, is not an old-time picture however, for the main action will be laid in 1980. The 1880 shots merely serve to link up, by contrast, the days of our grandfathers with those of our grandchildren. Maureen O'Sullivan, you remember, has the leading feminine role, and John Garrick plays opposite her, with El Brendel, Marjorie White, Frank Albertson, Hobart Bosworth, Mischa Auer and Ivan Linow in the supporting cast.
6/28/1930 LAR GIRL FROM IRELAND IS NEW STAR
(Editor's Note: This is the fifteenth of a series of articles about the interesting people of Hollywood. Monday's article will be about Buster Keaton, frozen-faced comedian.)
By Ted LeBerthon
Maureen O'Sullivan, like Maurice Chevalier, has arrived in the talkies in a needed hour, fulfilling a national necessity.
This lovely little Irish girl who is but 18, has touched American hearts so deeply and so immediately, that it is almost as certain as if ordained that she will be not only a great actress of the near future, but a marvelous transforming influence as well.
She was needed, because her simple, high-hearted goodness and tender beauty were needed in the orbit in which many modern talkies circle. It was an orbit clouded with sexiness, warm and sticky and unhealthy. Now it may become clear, clean and magical.
"Flaming youth," idolized by crass business men, has had materialistic America in its hot, tense grip, one which suffocated us in sensuous veils in lieu of the freedom its proponents promised.
Frank Borzage filmed The Song of My Heart in Ireland, and in a trice opened our eyes to a world that must seem to most of us in America very new and fresh, but that has always existed for those who had eyes to see it.
Gone was all tense, gaudy sexiness. We found ourselves in Ireland, amid scenes so quietly heartening, landscapes so full of a strangely divine poetry, that thousands who saw this extraordinary production wept not only during its sad moments, but wept from joy. I watched their faces, and few were of Irish cast. They wept, not because they were Irish, but because they had made a discovery.
That Irish landscape, those drifting meadows in which theh homes of Irish gentle folk fit in as if they had belonged forever, seemed to correspond with something audiences had long hungered for, without ever having before known what it was.
The Irish people owe a debt of gratitude to Borzage for The Song of My Heart. It was the first time, that Americans really had seen Ireland on the screen, and had felt the authentic pulse beat of the Irish character.
The breadth of Borzage's humanity deserves recognition, for it is doubtful if the motion picture screen ever has shown the fine qualities of the Jewish people as it did in Borzage's Humoresque of some ten or more years ago.
Maureen O'Sullivan, a mere school girl at the Sacred Heart convent in Dublin, was having dinner one night in the first week of September, last year, in the Plaza Café, in Dublin, with some friends, Borzage, John McCormack—the star of the production—and the whole Fox company, were having dinner at a large table nearby.
She had no more idea that she was being observed by film celebrities, and that she was destined to play her lovely role in The Song of My Heart than she had of being suddenly transported to Mars, for she never had been an actress.
I say lovely role because it was she who epitomized Ireland, in a sense, and awakened in the audience a kind of love and delight that had long lain dormant.
We who saw her on the screen of Grauman's Chinese theater, surfeited as we are with "hot mamas" and blondes of the type gentlemen prefer, had always known such a girl in our hearts. But, as we grew older and more skeptical, we had doubted that she could exist in the flesh.
And there she was...on the screen, and talking. And a few weeks later, there she was sitting across from me at a small desk in the Fox studio offices talking to me alone.
She had just been working in a scene from Just Imagine, in which Fox is featuring her. She already had proven that her acting in The Song of My Heart was no fluke by her delicate and amusing comedy in support of Will Rogers in So This Is London. And it has just been announced that she is to costar with Charles Farrell in The Princess and the Plumber.
"I was born in Boyle....Ireland, on May 17, 1911," little Miss O'Sullivan tells me. She has a demure way of lowering her eyes, and shaking her head, and smiling with a very old wisdom; and her manner of speech is simple and gracious.
"I just happened to be there because my father's regiment, the Connaught Rangers, were there. In fact, ‘mummy' didn't know where I was going to be born, I am told. Nearly every room in the town was occupied on account of the troops being in town.
"My ‘mater' finally had me in a little room over a draper's shop. There was a big dance in the town, and the gay music accompanied my arrival into the world, I have been told."
Years passed, as they have a habit of doing. The child, Maureen, was educated at the Sacred Heart Academy in Dublin. Charles O'Sullivan, her father, now a retired military officer, would be stationed in various parts of the country.
Then came the night of the first week in September, 1929, when she caught the eye of the Fox film group in the café.
"It was a few nights later, however," she tells me, "that everything happened all of a sudden. To be precise, it was the night of September 11, and I am quite certain it was a Thursday night.
"I was at dinner with a boy. And—I might as well explain to you—we have professional dancing persons in Dublin, ‘pros' we call them, who will dance with patrons for six-pence a dance.
"A chap at another table had been dancing with one of the ‘pros.' At the conclusion of the dance, the ‘pro' brought him over to where I was seated, and said: "This gentleman is from the Fox Film company, and, while you must pardon us for this intrusion, he wants to know if you would be interested in acting in a picture.'
"My heart was in my mouth. I must confess I was quite overjoyed. For, was I interested? Would a duck swim? But I managed to stammer: ‘Oh, of course—‘ or some such thing.
Then the girl ‘pro' introduced me to the chap and he turned out to be Chet Lyons, the Fox cameraman. He introduced me, in turn, to Mr. Borzage—and here I am, with a 5-year contract."
This is indeed one of filmdom's strangest and swiftest stories of success. But Miss O'Sullivan takes it all as rather matter-of-fact.
"It seems now as if I had been doing this for years," she smiles seriously, "when, in fact, I am the greenest fledgling."
Perhaps an Irish girl lives ever in certain fantasies, so that the strange, the mysterious, is to her the commonplace. One key to this may be discovered in a discussion of Irish mythology with Maureen O'Sullivan.
"Elves and pixies and leprechauns, or what we term more broadly the little people," she said, with conviction, "are seen and known to almost every Irish child under twelve."
"Do you mean to say that they really think they see them?" I countered, in a tone of marked incredulity.
"They not only think they see them. They actually see them," she replied, emphatically. "I saw the little people, standing in flowers, walking in the grass, and performing all manner of antics, until but a very few years ago. Now I don't see them any more."
"Then you admit it's just a childhood illusion, stimulated by nursery tales?"
"Oh, non, no, no. Of course, both my ‘mummy' and my ‘nanny' told me such tales. But I really saw, and knew the little people. It's nothing unique. It's just that the children are somehow able to see them, and grown-ups aren't. It's all very simple to grasp."
Miss O'Sullivan is a practical young woman. She says that her highest ambition is to win the Motion Picture Arts medal for the most consistently good acting on the screen this year, or next year, or the year beyond that.
"I believe it good to have an immediate goal," she smiles.
"Would you like to make more photoplays about Ireland?"
"Yes," she answers, "but the Irish are so witty, so knowing. They would be certain to say, ‘Sure, and we've seen much truer and funnier and more pathetic things in real life right at home.'
"They're very critical. And besides, they are more interested in the rest of the world. American movies draw huge crowds in the smallest villages. Your movie heroes are our movie heroes. I had a crush on Rudolph Valentino for ever so long."
When I left Maureen O'Sullivan, I wondered if it would not be well for the rest of the world to be more interested in Ireland, where children still see elemental nature spirits, and nearly everyone still sees a divine meaning in the greatest drama of all, the drama of eternal life.
7/5/1930 EE Fox Film Find Once Farmed Irish Chickens
When news reached this country that Frank Borzage had discovered the girl he wanted to play an ingenue role in John McCormack's Movietone picture several widely distorted articles anent the "discovery" appeared.
Borzage actually did see the girl in a little restaurant or tearoom in Dublin, invited her to take a test, and though she had no experience, the girl showed Borzage possibilities which reviewers, when the picture was produced, acclaimed.
Miss O'Sullivan was educated in Dublin and London convents and completed her education in a finishing school near Paris. Her father was major of the Connaugh rangers in Dublin, and at 17 years of age Maureen was conducting, on her own, a chicken ranch, near her home, which was netting her £25 a week—close to $125 in American money.
Few girls who have entered pictures have received more acclaim than this girl received from those who saw and reviewed the John McCormack picture. Winfield R. Sheehan was enthused that he signed her on a long-term contract. She surpassed her first work by her portrayal of an English girl in Will Rogers' starring picture, So This Is London, now entering its fourth week at the Carthay Circle. John G. Blystone directed the production, which includes in its cast Irene Rich, Frank Albertson, Mary Forbes, Lumsden Hare and others.
Abe Lyman's band, featuring "Skin" Young, who renders "Moanin' Low," appears on the stage.
7/20/1930 LAX MAUREEN O'SULLIVAN LEARNS TO SMILE AT TRAFFIC TAGS
By Kenneth R. Porter
Hollywood gets mean occasionally. And the sages say, "Don't take it seriously!"
One accustomed to professional buffeting lives by this philosophy. But Maureen O'Sullivan wasn't a professional when the Fox Corporation decided to make an actress of her. She arrived in the film city with pleasant memories of a quaint little home in Saintsbury, Kiliney, Ireland. There she had led a sheltered and quiet life.
CAR STOLEN
Fortunately Maureen learns readily. She purchased a light automobile, her first, as transportation to the studio from her modest home in Beverly Hills.
The car was not flashy but traffic officers were prone to write tickets for all violations. In rapid succession she answered several motor misdemeanors and then the car was stolen. To add insult to injury a newspaper made an unfair and unjust remark about her histrionic ability.
The friendliness of home beckoned. Then, with a saucy tilt of her head she laughed and became more seriously engrossed in her work. Time did the rest. Miss O'Sullivan is now appearing in So This Is London, at the Carthay Circle Theater.
"I just wasn't acquainted with the ways of Hollywood," said Miss O'Sullivan, when reminded of her early experiences. "You see, everything is different here. People are all hurrying about so. I had never been so far away from home before and I had few friends when I first arrived. I was a bit afraid of my work too, for I had never been on the stage or had any theatrical experience.
"I suppose you will laugh when I tel you I am having more fun now, just working. If you think a woman can't keep a secret, just try to find out about my latest picture," she laughed gleefully.
"I felt so sorry for the boy who took my car," she said. "He only drove it around town and left it when the gasoline was gone. I had to go to court when the found the boy and he really looked so sorry I tried to get the judge to let him go. They wouldn't let him go free, so I just didn't tell them about my coat that was missing when my car was found. It only cost me my coat and it might have cost him about three years in prison."
So Maureen O'Sullivan is not taking Hollywood seriously now. She laughs at the things that seemed serious at first—all but her work, which she claims will always be serious to her.
Irene Dunne and Richard Dix will not have a monopoly on the limelight in Stingaree, even though they will get co-starring billing on the picture. Stingaree now rises as practically an all-star production. A deal is expected to be signed today for Mary Boland, Paramount star, to play one of the featured roles in the picture of Australian locale. Or that might have changed the locale by this time, you can never tell about these screen adaptations. And Radio Pictures also is paying out heavy telephone toll calls to London in an effort to get Leslie Banks for another big featured role in this same picture. Banks originally was brought to Hollywood by this studio, and made one picture here, I believe.
Mary Boland is said to have the right, under the terms of her Paramount contract, to negotiate one picture deal with an outside company during the year. Paramount keeps her so busy that she surely does not have much time to think about outside work, but this role in Stingaree is practically set for her. William Wellman, the director noted for his vigorous dramatic speed when he was under contract to Warners, will direct Stingaree. And Irene Dunne, whose singing voice scarcely has been heard on the screen, will portray the role of an opera singer.
....
Warners change their on cast assignments without a qualm. Last night the studio previewed As the Earth Turns at the Warner Beverly Theater and as a result of the enthusiasm for Donald Woods, who plays the male lead, they have reached a sudden decision to put Woods into this role. Talbot has been working in the picture for a week, and the studio says another assignment will be found for him. The studio also changed the title of the picture again. This time it is Fog Over San Francisco. Since this is the fourth change in the title of the picture, let's hope the this title sticks. It seems that the Warners believe that Donald Woods is destined for immediately stardom, and they want to rush him before the public in as many pictures as possible. In the brief time that he has been under contract he has appeared in As the Earth Turns and The Merry Wives of Reno.
....
While I was on the subject of Stingaree and the stars being sought for this production, I neglected to mentioned that Andy Devine has been signed for a featured role in this picture. On the call sheets also is the name of Snub Pollard. It has been years since I have seen Pollard on the screen, and this assignment may forecast a real comeback for him. Incidentally, the signing of these two players indicates some comedy angles for the picture.
....
Constance Cummings reports for work at once for the lead in Glamour at Universal. And that assignment heralded quite a flood of offers from other companies. Columbia has given her the script of The Most Precious Thing In Life. This offers her the role of the mother who ages throughout the long period of time. Karen Morley and Colleen Moore both were considered for the part. Connie also is almost set to play the role of the wife in Springtime For Henry, the play which her husband, Benn W. Levy, wrote and which will reach the screen at Fox. Levy is now at the latter studio working on the screen adaptation.
....
That contract which Gloria Swanson is supposed to sign with Irving Thalberg at MGM is still under fire. Money terms and selection of a story will have to be decided signatures go on the contract. A rumor is out that Gloria may play the much disputed feminine lead with Maurice Chevalier in The Merry Widow. Jeanette MacDonald and Joan Crawford are hardly discussed for the part any more. But then there is also talk that Lilian Harvey and Evelyn Laye would be right for the part. Positive selection of an actress should be made very soon now.
....
Before Busby Berkeley wins a chance to start as a dramatic director, he will first have to do duty once more in staging a big musical sequences. Warners have completed the Dick Powell picture Hot Air, and they decided that what the picture needs is a smash musical finale. So Berkeley is assigned to do the job.
....
As mild interest in fantasies continues, word comes that Fox contemplates making a talkie remake of Dante's Inferno. The story was made as a silent picture by Fox in 1924.
Maureen O'Sullivan In the 30's
ABBREVIATIONS
DN – Daily News
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
IDN – Illustrated Daily News
LAR – Los Angeles Record
LAPR – Los Angeles Post-Record
LAX – Los Angeles Examiner
MPH – Motion Picture Herald
SFC – San Francisco Chronicle
1/12/1930 EH Harrison Carroll
Maureen O'Sullivan leaves here on the 25th for Ireland, where she'll visit her home. Because of her Fox contract, she'll have no trouble re-entering the country. The government permits foreign players to return as long as they are signed to a studio.
3/16/1930 FD Song O' My Heart
(All-Talker)
Fox 1 hr., 25 mins.
A box office certainty. Good acting by McCormack. Excellent recording of his voice, together with beautiful photography.
Perhaps the outstanding merit of this picture, and one that will cause much surprised comment which in turn will be profitable advertising, is the fact that John McCormack's famous tenor voice is reproduced so naturally and so pleasingly. Against the background of a simple but fitting sentimental story, McCormack sings about a dozen well chosen songs, enough to satisfy the expectations of the class of audience he is most likely to draw. Other vales of the picture include some thoroughly enjoyable comedy by J.M. Kerrigan and Farrell MacDonald, a feast of scenic beauty and gracefully directed action. Director, cameraman and sound engineer share in a technical triumph. Injection of juvenile interest is accomplished through a talented youngster.
Cast: John McCormack, Alice Joyce, Maureen O'Sullivan, J.M. Kerrigan, John Garrick, Tommy Clifford, Farrell MacDonald, Effie Elisler, Emily Fitzroy, Edwin Schneider, Endreas de Segurola, Edward Martindel.
Director, Frank Borzage; Author, Tom Barry; Adaptor, Sonya Levien; Dialoguer, Not Listed; Editor, Margaret Clancy; Cameraman, Chester Lyons; Monitor Man, G.P. Costello.
Direction, Excellent. Photography, Superb.
4/21/1930 LAR Song of My Heart
Grauman's Chinese—John MaCormack in Song of My Heart, by Tom Barry. Directed by Frank Borzage. Mack Sennett comedy, He Trumped Her Ace.
By Llewellyn Miller
When first that lovely, easy tenor of John McCormack's came with effortless sweetness from the screen of Grauman's Chinese Theater the audience knew that Song of My Heart was worth the money.
The story proved to be a slender thread, a simple unaffected tale, rather tenuous, but strong enough to provide a suitable background for the 11 songs that the famous tar sings.
The charming, direct delivery that marks McCormack's appearances on the concert stage is the most distinguished thing about his acting. It is natural, unpretentious, without any attempt at the usual stage tricks for emphasis. And it is to the everlasting credit of Fox that a win-the-girl romance was not wished off on him.
Much of the quality of the film is undoubtedly due to the direction by Frank Borzage who has maintained a directness and a quiet sentimentality throughout the story of an enduring love in a sleepy little Irish village.
McCormack plays Sean who has cherished a love for Mary for half a life time. Mary, played by Alice Joyce, had been forced to marry for money by a stern, iron-jawed aunt. Emily Fitzroy plays that part with the rigorous grimness for which she is justly noted.
Mary and her two children, Eileen and Tad, eventually find themselves without means of existence. Unaccustomed to poverty, Mary is helpless, and returns to her aunt, who immediately sets about breaking up Eileen's romance with a penniless young man.
Sean, feeling that something must be done to help the woman he loves, consents to a concert tour in America, though we are given to understand that he had put his career behind him when Mary married.
Slight, certainly, that plot is, but remember that there are plenty of easily contrived opportunities for McCormack to sing, which after all, is the point of the picture.
He gives "Then You'll Remember Me" as he sits in a shadowy room in his little cottage. Another song is sung to a group of children beside a little river, that, though just like any other river in the world manages to be as convincingly Irish as are the jaunting cars, the rich accents and the grandly Irish faces that grace the extras. Another song is heard in a little church.
He is shown singing "Lought Sereni E Cari," "Little Boy Blue," "Ireland, Mother Ireland" and "I Hear You Calling Me" from a concert stage. It was for the last two that the audience insisted upon giving a spontaneous, enthusiastic tribute of prolonged applause. Clapping marked the close of every song, for the recording is superb, and allows the sweetness of the voice to be heard, but for those two, the response was particularly marked.
Other songs are: "A Fairy Story by the Fire," "Just For Today," "I Felt You Near Me," "Kitty, My Love," "The Rose of Tralee" and "A Pair of Blue Eyes."
Farrell MacDonald and J.M. Kerrigan play a pair of battling cronies and supply a good part of the comedy with some fine, old, straight-from-the-shoulder Irish fighting words. Effie Ellsler has a secure spot in the credit lines for her work as Sean's foster mother; Tommy Clifford, a youngster, who has the whole map of Ireland under the freckles on his face, is sure to be kept busy providing comedy interest in the next years.
Maureen O'Sullivan plays Eileen. John Garrick is her young sweetheart, and Andreas De Sergurola, Edwin Schneider and Edward Martindel are featured.
The picture employs one old trick of silent films that it could very well have avoided. That is when a leaf flutters down past a window. Everyone knows that when an invalid is sitting beside the window and the leaves begin to fall that the news is being broken gently that the grim reaper is near. It is a fairly well known symbol, and most audiences will feel rather talked down to.
Song of My Heart should prove particularly fine matinee material, but if you don't like crowds of women, it is just as good at night, for McCormack's voice is one of the rare fine experiences that you will get from the screen.
4/21/1930 HDC Song O' My Heart
By Elizabeth Yeaman
All the favorite songs which John McCormack has made famous are included in his first talking picture, Song O' My Heart, which was given its western premiere Saturday night at the Chinese Theater. The sound recording of this Fox special is well nigh perfect, and when the Irish tenor sings "I Hear You Calling Me," "Little Boy Blue," "Just For Today," and "Then You'll Remember Me," the effect is much the same as when he appears on the concert stage.
No effort has been spared to make McCormack the whole show in this romance, much of which was filmed in his native Ireland. He sings eleven songs in all, and the story has been sacrificed in order to find opportunity to introduce these vocal numbers. But in spite of the fact that everyone loves to hear McCormack sing, it is rather a pity that his ballads cold not have been worked into the story with more subtlety.
NO SLIGHT INTENDED
It is not plausible that a director as able as Frank Borzage would deliberately have slighted this story from the pen of Tom Berry. It is more probable that the picture, when completed, was much too long, and since the production features John McCormack, much of the romantic background was slashed out in the cutting room. This explanation would account for the lack of continuity which made some of the scenes rather choppy and abrupt. The genius of Borzage is apparent, however, especially in the shots of "Little Boy Blue," which made the song much more heart-stirring than any vocal rendition could be without this pictorial accompaniment.
It is Maureen O'Sullivan, a newcomer to the screen, who contributes one of the most sympathetic interpretations of romantic innocence that has been seen in a long time. Miss O'Sullivan was recruited in Ireland, and the acting of this beautiful youngster has a freshness and naturalness that is entirely lacking in affectation. The audience would have enjoyed seeing more of her.
BOY IS DELIGHTFUL
Tommy Clifford, an engaging little scamp also direct from Ireland, was indispensable to the comedy of the picture. Master Tommy managed to combine naivete and shrewdness in an inimitable manner and his voice and accent were perfect.
Other character roles were excellently portrayed by John Garrick, J.M. Kerrigan, Farrell MacDonald, Effie Ellsler and Emily Fitzroy.
Some clever technique was introduced in the scenes of McCormack's concert triumph in the United States. The applause of his film audience provoked applause in the real audience, thus heightening the realism of his ovation. Another artistic effect was created when McCormack was rehearsing in church, while Alice Joyce listened outside. The song coming from the church carried the echo of a voice in an empty building.
Song O' My Heart, probably will have a tremendous box office success, for McCormack's admirers are legion, and his beautiful voice largely counteracts his lack of proficiency as an actor.
5/2/1930 HDC GALA REVUE SLATED FOR CHINESE MIDNITE SHOW
John Garrick, leading man in Song O' My Heart, Noel Frances, Irene Day and Frances McCoy have been added to the cast of stars who will appear in person at the midnight frolic tomorrow at Grauman's Chinese Theater in conjunction with the showing of the John McCormack picture.
Other stars previously announced to appear in the revue include Maureen O'Sullivan and Tommy Clifford, featured members of the cast of Song O' My Heart, Dixie Lee, popular Fox singing star, Leslie Mae, eccentric dancer, George Corcoran, comedian, and Abe Lyman and his band in new song and dance numbers.
A number of Fox stars and studio officials have announced their intention of attending this gala midnight show, and seats are now available for all performances at the local box offices.
5/3/1930 EE MOVIEAD "Midnite Frolic" on stage at 11:45pm at showing of Song O' My Heart
Maureen O'Sullivan, Tommy Clifford, Dixie Lee, Abe Lyman and His Band scheduled to appear.
5/3/1930 LAX AT CHINESE TONIGHT
Midnight matinees are to be resumed tonight at Grauman's Chinese Theater. Participating in this first event, to take place during the engagement of Song of My Heart, are a number of celebrities from the Fox Studios.
Maureen O'Sullivan and Tommy Clifford, who are seen with John McCormack in the motion picture feature, are on the list of entertainers. Others announced are "Whispering" Jack Smith, Richard Keene, Roger Davis, Dixie Lee, Francis McCoy, Leslie Mae and George "Red" Corcoran.
Abe Lyman and his band will also be part of the program.
5/10/1930 EH MAUREEN'S IRISH EYES HAVE IT
By Edward Stodel
When Irish eyes are smiling--well, the eyes have it.
You know, there's been an influx of French, German, Swedish, Spanish, Italian and Austrian eyes to Hollywood during the past few years. Many of them have acquired considerable luster, too. But, strange to say, we can not recall a representative from the land of the shamrocks. How about the famous Irish eyes?
It took Frank Borzage to settle the situation. For it was he who discovered Maureen O'Sullivan while in Dublin in the quest of a typically modern colleen to play the girl with John McCormack in Song o' My Heart. And so Maureen came to Hollywood.
THE EYES HAVE IT
Naturally we were wondering, before meeting Maureen this week, just how the Irish eyes would answer to their reputation. What's that they say about "you can hear the angels singin?" Well, we didn't hear any celestial voices, but we still say----the Irish eyes have it, and plenty of it.
Maureen's eyes are the blue of the lakes of Kiliney where she spent her childhood. She was born in Boyle.
Seven months in Hollywood has not detracted from her native charm. Yes, they speak English in Ireland, but even though Maureen has been schooled in London and Paris, she still retains a delightful flavor in her voice distinctive of her countrymen.
TRIES EXPERIMENT
I thought it would be an interesting experiment to see what a youthful newcomer to Hollywood from across the big water thinks of our flaming youth. Thus to make a novel interview of it, we had dinner, danced and then attended a play which was sponsored by a college sorority.
Our deduction was that youth is the same the world over.
"Hollywood has a frightful reputation in England," Maureen told me as we danced. (She's a good dancer, by the way, and she didn't have to come all the way over here to learn.) "From the stories I heard before I left home, you would have thought I was going to the land of sin itself.
"When I got here, I was surprised. The fellows and girls acted normal. They did the same sort of things at affairs that we did at home. The American boy, perhaps, is not as reserved when he meets a girl as is the Britisher, but he is just as nice. The other day I introduced a friend from London to a girl at the studio. He merely said, "How do you do." The girl complained to me later that he was cold and distant, in fact trying to be snobbish, but I'm sure he wasn't."
Later on we passed Grauman's Chinese theater, where Song o' My Heart is now playing. The crowds were just filing out.
Joking, Maureen said: "That's an awful picture, I hear, they say this new Irish girl, O'Sullivan, is terrible." She has an Irish sense of humor, all right, and her laugh--well, it matches her eyes.
"Seriously, though," I asked her, "don't you wish you could hear what they think of you?"
"I do and I don't," she replied. "I'd like to know so as to help myself without being conscious of it. I'm afraid I'd be too sensitive, I couldn't bear sitting next to a person and hear him say something uncomplimentary, but if it was constructive I'd like to know."
Maureen is alone here now. Her mother left her recently for home. She has a short vacation now but can not leave America because she would not be able to get back in again on the quota.
Her ambitions are to save a thousand pounds and to have been on all continents before she is 21. She has two years to go.
Meanwhile her Irish eyes are smiling--and that's no blarney.
5/10/1930 EE Actor Horde At Studio Reveals Broadway Raid
By Victor Shapiro
Seventy-one players are included on the new contract list of the Fox studios in Hollywood and Westwood, made known by Sol. M. Wurtzel, general superintendent, and make an impressive showing of Hollywood's "raid" on Broadway and reveal its crippling effect on Eastern stage productions.
There are also seven associate producers, nineteen directors, one stage director, twenty-seven writers, sixteen composers, five dance and ensemble directors, thirty-four dancers, twenty-four singers, two fashion creators, a test director, a music teacher and numerous other officials and technical experts.
The actors include John McCormack, Warner Baxter, William Collier, Charles Farrell, Edmund Lowe, Victor McLaglen, Will Rogers, Don Jose Mojica, Milton Sills, Frank Albertson, Robert Ames, Edwin Bartlett, Rex Bell, Humphrey Bogart, El Brendel, Robert Burns, Walter Catlett, Thomas Clifford, John Garrick, George Rossmith, William Harrigan, Mitchell Harris, Ted Healy, Gus Howard, Warren Hymer, Richard Keene, J.M. Kerrigan, Kenneth MacKenna, Paul Muni, J. Harold Murray, George O'Brien, Tom Patricola, Nat Pendleton, Frank Richardson, David Rollins, John Swor, Lee Tracy, Henry Victor, John Wayne and Charles Winninger.
The actresses include Janet Gaynor, Lois Moran, Beatrice Lillie, Luana, Alcaniz, Lucille Brown, Ilka Chase, Marguerite Churchill, Mae Clark, Joyce Compton, Irene Day, Fifi Dorsay, Noel Francis, Althea Heinly, Rose Hobart, Louise Huntington, Roxanne Curtis, Elizabeth Keating, Helen Keating, Dixie Lee (Bing Crosby), Claire Luce, Sharon Lynn, Leslie Mae, Mona Maris, Frances McCoy, Goodie Montgomery, Maureen O'Sullivan, Jillian Sand, Marie Saxon, Marjorie White and Ruth Warren.
The only male players who did not come to motion pictures with stage experience are Farrell, Albertson, Bell, Clifford, O'Brien, Rollins and Wayne. Miss Compton and Miss O'Sullivan are the only feminine players on the list who have not had stage training.
Contract writers included Tom Barry, Samuel H. Behrman, Andrew Bennison, Edwin Burke, Homer Croy, Earl Crooker, Owen Davis Sr., Hal G. Evarts, Jules Furthman, Frank Gay, Tom Geraghty, Rube Goldberg, Howard Green, Norman Hall, Llewellyn Hughes, Harry Johnson, Sonya Levien, Russell Medcraft, Dudley Nichols, Marton Orth, Ernest Pascal, Gen. Aylesworth Perry, Willard Robertson, Lynn Starling, Hayden Talbot, Harlan Thompson and Maureen Watkins.
The directors are John G. Blystone, Frank Borzage, David Butler, Irving Cummings, A.F. Erickson, Victor Fleming, John Ford, William K. Howard, Alexander Korda, Sidney Lanfield, Hamilton MacFadden, Leo McCarey, Guthrie McClintic, Alfred Santell, Chandler Sprague, Benjamin Stoloff, Berthold Viertel, Raoul Walsh and Alfred Werker.
Melville Burke is the only stage director.
The associate producers are Ralph Block, E.W. Butcher, Harold Lipstiz, Ned Marin, J.K. McGuinness, George Middleton and Al Rockett.
The list of composers numbers Buddy de Sylva, Lew Brown, Ray Henderson, Joseph McCarthy, Ray Henderson, Joseph McCarthy, James Hanley, James Monaco, William Kernell, Albert H. Malotte, Richard Fall, Grace Henry, Morris Hamilton, Cliff Friend, George Gershwin, Ira Gershwin, Jean Schwartz and Troy Sanders.
Joseph Urban is creator of settings and Sophie Wachner is fashion creator, assisted by Dolly Tree.
John Stone is editor of the silent pictures department; Jack Gardner is casting director; Joseph W. Reilly is director of safety; Ben Jackson is manager of the music department; Rolla Flora has charge of movietone effects; Barney Wolf heads the cutting department, with Charles Dudley as chief cosmetician, and Ben Wurtzel in charge of the maintenance department.
5/12/1930 EH Screenographs
By Harrison Carroll
Rumors that Charles Farrell and Janet Gaynor will be separated as a screen team gain credence from the assignment of Fox's new Irish star, Maureen O'Sullivan, to play opposite Farrell in The Princess and the Plumber.
This is to be a film version of Alice Duer Miller's novel of the same name.
Miss O'Sullivan, whose sweet charm was one of the features of Song o' My Heart, will be seen as a princess with a mortgaged castle. Farrell is the young American pluming engineer who comes out to see about modernizing the place.
Since the John McCormick picture Miss O'Sullivan has appeared with Will Rogers in So This is London. They like her work very much out Fox way.
5/14/1930 LAR Jimmy Starr
Maureen O'Sullivan, pretty little Irish miss who made a distinct hit in Song O' My Heart, is causing quite a number of male heart flutterings.
William Bakewell shakes all over at the mere mention of her name, and Frank Albertson admits his pulse leaps when she's near.
It seems that Frank introduced Maureen to Billy when they were dining at a café. The topper of the gag was that he walked out with Maureen and left Billy with the dinner check.
5/25/1930 FD So This is London
Fox 1 hr., 32 mins.
Sure box-office bet. With Will Rogers in fine form. Full of pungent humor. First-rate cast.
So, This is London, based on the George M. Cohan play, is certain to make Will Rogers more popular than ever. The philosophic comedian is practically the whole show. All the way through there is a strong suspicion that more than a few of the lines are his own. There is too much of that pungent humor, droll wisdom and observant quality about them to be identified with anyone else. The star holds the audience in the palm of his hand in a performance that is unstudied and human to the extreme. For there has been weaved into the film a tender love idyll in which figure Frank Albertson and Maureen O'Sullivan. The film shows Rogers as an anti-British American who is thrown in with a group of anti-American English folk. This animosity almost breaks up a romance between his son and an English girl. Everything, however, ends happily when prejudices are forgotten on both sides.
CAST: Will Rogers, Irene Rich, Frank Albertson, Maureen O'Sullivan, Lumdsen Hare, Mary Forbes, Bramwell Fletcher, Dorothy Christie, Ellen Woodston, Martha Lee Sparks.
Director, John Blystone; Author, Arthur Goodrich; Adaptors, Owen Davis Sr.; Editor, Jack Bennis; Cameraman, Charles Clarke; Monitor Man, Frank MacKenzie.
Direction, Good. Photography, Good.
6/20/1930 LAR So This Is London
Fox Carthay Circle–Will Rogers in So This Is London, with Irene Rich, Frank Albertson, Lumsden Hare, Maureen O'Sullivan, Bramwell Fletcher, Dorothy Christie and Mary Forbes. Screen version of George M. Cohan's play, directed by John Blystone. The Dogville Murder Case, an all-barkie comedy. Abe Lyman and his band, with Skin Young, soloist.
By Llewellyn Miller
Will Rogers, the sage of the southwest, the oracle of Oklahoma, ex-mayor of Beverly Hills, present ambassador at large from Claremore, chewing gum champion and man-about-the-air, took to the screen at the Fox Carthay Circle last night in So This Is London.
Though the film is not quite the high comedy caliber of They Had to See Paris, the brilliant first night audience, which had come to chuckle, remained to give rounds of laughter for Rogers' drawled wisecracks.
He plays Hiram Draper, stubbornly anti-British Yankee who gets "Farther away from home than the barn for the first time" when he takes his wife and son to England to complete the purchase of a cotton mill.
"Does Dad still hate the English, just because they're English?" asks Junior, who has fallen in love with Elinor, a British girl, on the way over.
"He says he hates them just because they're not Americans," explains Mrs. Draper with a certain amused air of resignation.
Elinor's parents are no less opinionated about the citizens of the United States. "Vulgar people, always chewing gum and talking about money," says Lord Percy Worthing bitterly when he finds that he has been snared into a weekend at Lady Amy Duckworth's house with the despised visitors from across the big pond.
Those who saw George M. Cohan's play on the stage will be mildly surprised that the two funniest scenes have been cut from the film, especially since they were written in the perfect flashback tradition of the movies. These are the sequences where each contemptuous family is shown as the other imagines it, as comic strip caricatures of British bounders and American upstarts.
Instead the Hiram Drapers actually pretend to be as bad as the Worthings think they are, and very nearly ruin their son's romance with their convincing performance. Will Rogers slides down the bannisters, goes into an Indian war dance as an exhibition of American whoopee spirit unleashed for a party. Irene Rich, as the charming Mrs. Draper, puts her hands on her hips, achieves a swagger that would be an adornment to any small time chorus girl, and shakes hands with a free and easy bluster.
It takes an afternoon of steady imbibing on the shooting ground to level the antagonisms of the heads of the family.
Will Rogers has plenty of opportunity to drawl dry comments on the current American scene, and as a drawler, he is my favorite, so the film seems to have plenty to recommend it. John Blystone directed.
Irene Rich is gracious and charming, as always. Frank Albertson is directly boyish as their son. Maureen O'Sullivan plays the English daughter with a delightful Irish accent. Dorothy Christie and Bramwell Fletcher are good in smaller roles. Mary Forbes plays the anxiously acquiescent Lady Worthing. Lumsden Hare, very funny in himself, is directed for such deliberate tempo that the film tends to drag in spots where he and Will Rogers try to beat each other at being inarticulate.
The Dogville Murder Case is a travesty of all of the mystery thrillers. It is acted entirely by dogs who have been chosen for type with an almost inspired selectiveness.
Abe Lyman's band, better than ever, gives an all too short program, featuring "Skin" Young's trick voice in a solo.
The funniest spot in the film is saved for the last scene. The tune which serves both nations so well starts. While Sir Percy intones "God Save the King," Hiram Draper bravely begins "My Country ‘Tis of Thee" in a rather mournful howl, only to have the words of the second verse evade him, as they have so many good Americans before him.
That scene alone makes the film worth seeing.
6/20/1930 LAX So This Is London
By Louella O. Parsons
Will Rogers says a few good words about the English in So This Is London just in time to save us from international complications. So expert a diplomat as Mr. Rogers could be depended upon to save this precarious situation even on the screen. The Rogers champions, those who love his whimsical humor and his philosophy, gathered at Carthay Circle Theater last night to take a look at this latest Rogers comedy.
While So This is London is not as typically a Rogers story as They Had to See Paris, and while it lacks the pathetic situations of Mr. Rogers' first Fox offering, there is no mistaking the quality of the humor.
There is one big laugh from the time Will Rogers arrives in London, with a terrific hate in his heart for all things British, until he and the English get together. The lines given him are especially good. I did not see the stage play by Arthur Goodrich when George M. Cohan produced it in New York, so I have no way of knowing where Goodrich's comedy ends and Rogers' begins. I should be willing, however, to wager that much of the dialogue is Will's own. It sounds like him.
Owen Davis Sr., no amateur when it comes to furnishing dialogue, is credited with the adaptation. That's another reason, probably, why it's good. John Blystone, one of the newer directors, gave a good account of himself.
The unembellished story is trite and simple enough. An English girl meets an American boy on shipboard and they fall in love. His father hates the English and his father is equally bitter against the Americans. There you have the plot in a nutshell.
Frank Albertson as that boy, the son of Hiram Draper (Will Rogers), is an attractive youth with a pleasing screen personality. The girl, Maureen O'Sullivan, admittedly Irish, easily passes for an English girl. I like her much better, in fact, in So This Is London than I did in the John McCormack picture. She seems to have profited from her experience before the camera. There is a youngness about her and a sweetness that is pleasing.
Mr. Rogers might have looked the whole world over for a leading lady and not found one with the charm and grace of Irene Rich. She is perfect in this part and her comedy, even though necessarily broad in several scenes with Mr. Rogers, is excellent.
Lumsden Hare does a burlesque on the English that is more exaggerated than any cartoon ever published. His drawling voice, his monocle, his drooping mustaches are all in accordance with the comedy idea. Mary Forbes as the gracious English lady is well cast. Bramwell Fletcher is adequate but not outstanding. One of the outstanding. One of the outstanding performance is given by Dorothy Christy. She makes her first appearance on the screen in this picture.
The entertainment value of So This Is London is all anyone can ask. Mr. Rogers is delightfully humorous and excellently human, so much so we do not feel at any time he is acting. That is the best tribute I can give him.
In addition to Mr. Rogers' picture, there were Abe Lyman and his orchestra. When you say Abe Lyman, that is synonymous with good music. His orchestra with Skin Young as soloist, put over some tuneful numbers, among them two negro spirituals that got a hand.
An all-barkie comedy, The Dogville Murder Case, directed by Zion Myers is extremely amusing. This and a Fox Movietone Newsreel completed the program. Frank Albertson and Will Rogers Jr. were outdoors at the microphone. The young "Bill" apparently hasn't his father's shyness at openings for he seemed right at home.
6/24/1930 HDC Elizabeth Yeaman
DeSylva, Brown and Henderson's second musical production for Fox goes into production today with David Butler directing. This picture, titled Just Imagine, is laid in old New York and the days of high bicycles, hansome cabs, horse drawn busses, gas lamps, cobble stone pavements and horse cars. Several hundred extras are working in the preliminary atmospheric shots, and several thousand more will be used in later sequences. Despite its preliminary scenes, Just Imagine, is not an old-time picture however, for the main action will be laid in 1980. The 1880 shots merely serve to link up, by contrast, the days of our grandfathers with those of our grandchildren. Maureen O'Sullivan, you remember, has the leading feminine role, and John Garrick plays opposite her, with El Brendel, Marjorie White, Frank Albertson, Hobart Bosworth, Mischa Auer and Ivan Linow in the supporting cast.
6/28/1930 LAR GIRL FROM IRELAND IS NEW STAR
(Editor's Note: This is the fifteenth of a series of articles about the interesting people of Hollywood. Monday's article will be about Buster Keaton, frozen-faced comedian.)
By Ted LeBerthon
Maureen O'Sullivan, like Maurice Chevalier, has arrived in the talkies in a needed hour, fulfilling a national necessity.
This lovely little Irish girl who is but 18, has touched American hearts so deeply and so immediately, that it is almost as certain as if ordained that she will be not only a great actress of the near future, but a marvelous transforming influence as well.
She was needed, because her simple, high-hearted goodness and tender beauty were needed in the orbit in which many modern talkies circle. It was an orbit clouded with sexiness, warm and sticky and unhealthy. Now it may become clear, clean and magical.
"Flaming youth," idolized by crass business men, has had materialistic America in its hot, tense grip, one which suffocated us in sensuous veils in lieu of the freedom its proponents promised.
Frank Borzage filmed The Song of My Heart in Ireland, and in a trice opened our eyes to a world that must seem to most of us in America very new and fresh, but that has always existed for those who had eyes to see it.
Gone was all tense, gaudy sexiness. We found ourselves in Ireland, amid scenes so quietly heartening, landscapes so full of a strangely divine poetry, that thousands who saw this extraordinary production wept not only during its sad moments, but wept from joy. I watched their faces, and few were of Irish cast. They wept, not because they were Irish, but because they had made a discovery.
That Irish landscape, those drifting meadows in which theh homes of Irish gentle folk fit in as if they had belonged forever, seemed to correspond with something audiences had long hungered for, without ever having before known what it was.
The Irish people owe a debt of gratitude to Borzage for The Song of My Heart. It was the first time, that Americans really had seen Ireland on the screen, and had felt the authentic pulse beat of the Irish character.
The breadth of Borzage's humanity deserves recognition, for it is doubtful if the motion picture screen ever has shown the fine qualities of the Jewish people as it did in Borzage's Humoresque of some ten or more years ago.
Maureen O'Sullivan, a mere school girl at the Sacred Heart convent in Dublin, was having dinner one night in the first week of September, last year, in the Plaza Café, in Dublin, with some friends, Borzage, John McCormack—the star of the production—and the whole Fox company, were having dinner at a large table nearby.
She had no more idea that she was being observed by film celebrities, and that she was destined to play her lovely role in The Song of My Heart than she had of being suddenly transported to Mars, for she never had been an actress.
I say lovely role because it was she who epitomized Ireland, in a sense, and awakened in the audience a kind of love and delight that had long lain dormant.
We who saw her on the screen of Grauman's Chinese theater, surfeited as we are with "hot mamas" and blondes of the type gentlemen prefer, had always known such a girl in our hearts. But, as we grew older and more skeptical, we had doubted that she could exist in the flesh.
And there she was...on the screen, and talking. And a few weeks later, there she was sitting across from me at a small desk in the Fox studio offices talking to me alone.
She had just been working in a scene from Just Imagine, in which Fox is featuring her. She already had proven that her acting in The Song of My Heart was no fluke by her delicate and amusing comedy in support of Will Rogers in So This Is London. And it has just been announced that she is to costar with Charles Farrell in The Princess and the Plumber.
"I was born in Boyle....Ireland, on May 17, 1911," little Miss O'Sullivan tells me. She has a demure way of lowering her eyes, and shaking her head, and smiling with a very old wisdom; and her manner of speech is simple and gracious.
"I just happened to be there because my father's regiment, the Connaught Rangers, were there. In fact, ‘mummy' didn't know where I was going to be born, I am told. Nearly every room in the town was occupied on account of the troops being in town.
"My ‘mater' finally had me in a little room over a draper's shop. There was a big dance in the town, and the gay music accompanied my arrival into the world, I have been told."
Years passed, as they have a habit of doing. The child, Maureen, was educated at the Sacred Heart Academy in Dublin. Charles O'Sullivan, her father, now a retired military officer, would be stationed in various parts of the country.
Then came the night of the first week in September, 1929, when she caught the eye of the Fox film group in the café.
"It was a few nights later, however," she tells me, "that everything happened all of a sudden. To be precise, it was the night of September 11, and I am quite certain it was a Thursday night.
"I was at dinner with a boy. And—I might as well explain to you—we have professional dancing persons in Dublin, ‘pros' we call them, who will dance with patrons for six-pence a dance.
"A chap at another table had been dancing with one of the ‘pros.' At the conclusion of the dance, the ‘pro' brought him over to where I was seated, and said: "This gentleman is from the Fox Film company, and, while you must pardon us for this intrusion, he wants to know if you would be interested in acting in a picture.'
"My heart was in my mouth. I must confess I was quite overjoyed. For, was I interested? Would a duck swim? But I managed to stammer: ‘Oh, of course—‘ or some such thing.
Then the girl ‘pro' introduced me to the chap and he turned out to be Chet Lyons, the Fox cameraman. He introduced me, in turn, to Mr. Borzage—and here I am, with a 5-year contract."
This is indeed one of filmdom's strangest and swiftest stories of success. But Miss O'Sullivan takes it all as rather matter-of-fact.
"It seems now as if I had been doing this for years," she smiles seriously, "when, in fact, I am the greenest fledgling."
Perhaps an Irish girl lives ever in certain fantasies, so that the strange, the mysterious, is to her the commonplace. One key to this may be discovered in a discussion of Irish mythology with Maureen O'Sullivan.
"Elves and pixies and leprechauns, or what we term more broadly the little people," she said, with conviction, "are seen and known to almost every Irish child under twelve."
"Do you mean to say that they really think they see them?" I countered, in a tone of marked incredulity.
"They not only think they see them. They actually see them," she replied, emphatically. "I saw the little people, standing in flowers, walking in the grass, and performing all manner of antics, until but a very few years ago. Now I don't see them any more."
"Then you admit it's just a childhood illusion, stimulated by nursery tales?"
"Oh, non, no, no. Of course, both my ‘mummy' and my ‘nanny' told me such tales. But I really saw, and knew the little people. It's nothing unique. It's just that the children are somehow able to see them, and grown-ups aren't. It's all very simple to grasp."
Miss O'Sullivan is a practical young woman. She says that her highest ambition is to win the Motion Picture Arts medal for the most consistently good acting on the screen this year, or next year, or the year beyond that.
"I believe it good to have an immediate goal," she smiles.
"Would you like to make more photoplays about Ireland?"
"Yes," she answers, "but the Irish are so witty, so knowing. They would be certain to say, ‘Sure, and we've seen much truer and funnier and more pathetic things in real life right at home.'
"They're very critical. And besides, they are more interested in the rest of the world. American movies draw huge crowds in the smallest villages. Your movie heroes are our movie heroes. I had a crush on Rudolph Valentino for ever so long."
When I left Maureen O'Sullivan, I wondered if it would not be well for the rest of the world to be more interested in Ireland, where children still see elemental nature spirits, and nearly everyone still sees a divine meaning in the greatest drama of all, the drama of eternal life.
7/5/1930 EE Fox Film Find Once Farmed Irish Chickens
When news reached this country that Frank Borzage had discovered the girl he wanted to play an ingenue role in John McCormack's Movietone picture several widely distorted articles anent the "discovery" appeared.
Borzage actually did see the girl in a little restaurant or tearoom in Dublin, invited her to take a test, and though she had no experience, the girl showed Borzage possibilities which reviewers, when the picture was produced, acclaimed.
Miss O'Sullivan was educated in Dublin and London convents and completed her education in a finishing school near Paris. Her father was major of the Connaugh rangers in Dublin, and at 17 years of age Maureen was conducting, on her own, a chicken ranch, near her home, which was netting her £25 a week—close to $125 in American money.
Few girls who have entered pictures have received more acclaim than this girl received from those who saw and reviewed the John McCormack picture. Winfield R. Sheehan was enthused that he signed her on a long-term contract. She surpassed her first work by her portrayal of an English girl in Will Rogers' starring picture, So This Is London, now entering its fourth week at the Carthay Circle. John G. Blystone directed the production, which includes in its cast Irene Rich, Frank Albertson, Mary Forbes, Lumsden Hare and others.
Abe Lyman's band, featuring "Skin" Young, who renders "Moanin' Low," appears on the stage.
7/20/1930 LAX MAUREEN O'SULLIVAN LEARNS TO SMILE AT TRAFFIC TAGS
By Kenneth R. Porter
Hollywood gets mean occasionally. And the sages say, "Don't take it seriously!"
One accustomed to professional buffeting lives by this philosophy. But Maureen O'Sullivan wasn't a professional when the Fox Corporation decided to make an actress of her. She arrived in the film city with pleasant memories of a quaint little home in Saintsbury, Kiliney, Ireland. There she had led a sheltered and quiet life.
CAR STOLEN
Fortunately Maureen learns readily. She purchased a light automobile, her first, as transportation to the studio from her modest home in Beverly Hills.
The car was not flashy but traffic officers were prone to write tickets for all violations. In rapid succession she answered several motor misdemeanors and then the car was stolen. To add insult to injury a newspaper made an unfair and unjust remark about her histrionic ability.
The friendliness of home beckoned. Then, with a saucy tilt of her head she laughed and became more seriously engrossed in her work. Time did the rest. Miss O'Sullivan is now appearing in So This Is London, at the Carthay Circle Theater.
"I just wasn't acquainted with the ways of Hollywood," said Miss O'Sullivan, when reminded of her early experiences. "You see, everything is different here. People are all hurrying about so. I had never been so far away from home before and I had few friends when I first arrived. I was a bit afraid of my work too, for I had never been on the stage or had any theatrical experience.
"I suppose you will laugh when I tel you I am having more fun now, just working. If you think a woman can't keep a secret, just try to find out about my latest picture," she laughed gleefully.
"I felt so sorry for the boy who took my car," she said. "He only drove it around town and left it when the gasoline was gone. I had to go to court when the found the boy and he really looked so sorry I tried to get the judge to let him go. They wouldn't let him go free, so I just didn't tell them about my coat that was missing when my car was found. It only cost me my coat and it might have cost him about three years in prison."
So Maureen O'Sullivan is not taking Hollywood seriously now. She laughs at the things that seemed serious at first—all but her work, which she claims will always be serious to her.
Labels: Busby Berkeley, Jeanette MacDonald, Maureen O'Sullivan, Richard Dix
posted by GDH at 10:51 AM
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