Hollywood Film Shop
By CHARLES R. MOORE
Hollywood (UP) — For years Errol Flynn and Olivia de Havilland have been on the point of being man and wife on the screen.
It never quite worked out that way. Either they didn’t get married at all, Flynn got killed, or if they were married it was in the last three minutes of the picture.
Now at last they get married at about Scene No. 73, some halfway through the script of Warner Bros., “They Died With Their Boots On.”
This is some measure of appeasement for the fans who have been asking for more Flynn-de Havilland romance, but unfortunately the title quite accurately describes what happens to Flynn, et al, in the end.
So once more Li’l Olivia is a widow.
The picture is the story of Gen. George Custer’s life, from the time he was a West Point cadet to the massacre at Little Big Horn.
Flynn, of course, will be Custer,and everybody knows what happened to him in the Little Big Horn incident.
Laura Hope Crews has a featured spot in “The Man Who Came to Dinner.” Gene Lockhart, playing a small-town banker, is also a banker in “They Died With Their Boots On.” Hobart Bosworth, Sunday school superintendent in the “Heaven” film is working at the same time as a clergyman in the Custer picture.
Such is the setting which stars Dorothy Lamour and Jon Hall.
It’s a highly romantic thriller of native life on a paradise isle with chants, music and tribal pageantry that lend stirring effects to the melodrama, itself. Dorothy finds herself torn between her love for the tribal prince, Jon Hall, and his villainous cousin, Philip Reed. Lynne Overman, the tribe’s friendly white man, has his hands full trying to keep the two husky youths from killing each other. Intruding upon the ceremonies of the High Priest’s sacred rituals, Reed machine-guns the holy man by mistake and causes the dreaded curse — the awakening of Samara, the sacred Fire Mountain, to erupt.
The entire cast, including hundreds of ‘ panic-stricken natives, participates in the thrilling climax when the crater-explosion practically blows the entire island off the map.
Broad comedy, furnished by the inimitable Lynne Overman, serves as a breather between breath-taking, thrills.
World conditions made it unfeasible for Columbia to send the “Our Wife” company to Cristobal for important scenes, so John M. Stahl, producer-director of the comedy coming to the State Theatre Sunday, Monday and Tuesday had a section of the port built in San Fernando valley.
The background of the huge setting is one side of a luxury liner, with all decks and superstructure, from stern to stern.
The water front activities were copied in detail. Men and women selling flowers, candies, fruits and Panama hats move in and out of a crowd of several hundred extras.
American passenger cars of older vintages were used as taxis.
The scene opens with the arrival of an old jallopy bearing Melvyn Douglas, Ruth Hussey, Charles Coburn and John Hubbard. In hs character of a young American with an undue fondness for Scotch, Douglas has to be supported by Coburn and Hubbard. He can barely navigate. The others must carry him. A native Panamanian, playing among the extras, watched the scene interestedly.
“Not very natural,” he remarked afterward. “I know. I lived in Cristobal for years and watched the tourists come and go.”
“What’s wrong with two men helping their friend aboard when he’s drunk?” Another extra asked.
“In real life,” said the Panamanian, “all three would have been drunk!”
By Lee O. Lyon
Sylvan Simon, who directed “Whittling In The Dark” is expected to visit Broadway this week, as is Brian Aherne whom you’ll see soon in ” Smilin’ Through” …
There ‘will be six new songs in “Babes On Broadway” the next co-starring film for Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland, These two are together, also, in “Life Begins For Andy Hardy” scheduled for national release this month …
Marta Eggert, Viennese singing star, hat been signed to an M-G-M contract. She’s the second song-bird, this studio has captured this year, the other being Rist Stevens of the Metropolitan Opera who makes her debut opposite Nelson Eddy in “The Chocolate Soldier” …
What’s your idea of a gentleman? Ours is Don Ameche who actually told Rosalind Russell how to hit him for a sequence in “The Female Of The Species.”
Taken from The Dunkirk Evening Observer. Dunkirk, NY. Sept 13, 1941.
