Oh Sailor Behave (Warner Bros.) (1930)

“OH SAILOR BEHA VE!" — A Warner Bros. Production Special Newspaper Features (For Use On Woman’s Page) LOVELY IRENE DELROY REVEALS|| €4LL THE WAGON! SECRET OF SHABBY CURTAINS AND THREADBARE RUGS Surrounded by Luxury on All Sides Warner Star Insists on Keeping Old Dressing Room to The Amazement of All Hollywood By MARY JANE WARREN When a beautiful musical comedy star signs-a screen contract and packs the many trunks popularly believed necessary to transport a beautiful star’s wardrobe, legend has it that the first step in the new phase of her career is to furnish a studio dressing room. In fact, legend has it that she must furnish it in the luxurious manner befitting one whose delicacy of face and form has won her public acclaim and a generous share of the good things of earth. The saga holds true in almost every case. Irene Delroy who plays a leading role in “Oh Sailor Behave!” now playing at the Theatre, is one of the exceptions. Here the exception can be laid at the door of superstition. Visitors to the Warner Bros. studio in Hollywood would find a few illusions shattered upon visiting Miss Delroy’s dressing room. The drapes are frankly, shabby while the furniture is of too recent vintage to be termed antique, yet it looks much the worse for wear. And therein lies the story. Irene Delroy was one of the bright particular stars in that classic of musical comedies, “Follow Thru.” When she achieved the leading role in this, she hurriedly and inexpensively purchased a few things to make her dressing room inhabitable for a while, intending to do a good job later if the show was a hit. Irene had been in the show business long enough to have tasted its vagaries and she placed her trust in Father Time to prove the worth of a production. Not only was the show a success but the star danced up a few more rungs on the ladder reaching the goal she had set for herself. Temporarily, she forgot about her dressing room. “Follow Thru” had been running about six months when her maid reminded her that it needed refurnishing. It was-then that superstition reared its head and whispered to Miss Delroy that changes sometimes bring strange happenings. The dressing room remained the same during the long run of the show and at its close each piece of furniture was carefully and lovingly stored away. Irene Delroy had acquired a superstition, not because she wanted to fall in line with her contemporaries, but because she bey ' that the thing she cherished 3come, in some mysterious th fA, intimately associated with her career. Then came an engagement as ingenue lead in “Top Speed,” another gay musical, and out came the lucky curtains, chairs and tables. While appearing in “Top Speed,” Irene received the offer to star in Warner Bros. productions and the day she signed the contract she sat in her dressing room and vowed allegiance to the simple objects that held for her a magie charm. Thus it happens that a beautiful and high salaried sereen star lives her professional life in a simple room that is a strange contradiction to the luxuries of Hollywood. Often during the filming of “Oh Sailor Behave!” other members of the production would drop into Miss Delroy’s humble little dressing room for a chat between sequences. Invariably they would raise inquiring eyebrows and murmur something about, “getting your place fixed up after you’ve been here longer.” And invariably, the lovely Irene would smile knowingly and answer, “Not while I’m conscious. I like it this way. It feels like home.” And there are those, wise in the ways of talking picture producers, and wiser still in the ways of talking picture audiences, who say that Irene will have to consider Hollywood her home for a long, long time. Her success is written all over her first vehicle, “Oh Sailor Behave!” oO What price genius? In the case of Olsen and Johnson, Warner Bros comics, starring in “Oh Sailor Behavel’’ which is on view at the Theatre, the price runs pretty high and includes such ridicule, wide eyed the fear of little items as amazement and children. The comedians, as all their friends will testify, have been inseparable pals for fifteen years. Naturally, their interests are identical by this time and even when they are not engaged in a picture they are always together. They work whenever they get ideas—and what is more pertinent to this story=— WHEREVER these ideas are born, Frequently an idea will strike them they sauntering along a crowded street. Each time their procedure is the same. Both stop, tap their foreheads, turn toward each other and with a single, enthusiastic gesture communicate the idea. Then, slowly but accurately, they go on to rehearse the act, step by step. By this time a crowd of curious passers-by have collected. As the act progresses the spectators get the idea. Here are two “nuts” escaped from a neighboring asylum, working off a little suppressed emotion. Eyebrows are raised, a@ wave of titters sweeps through the crowd, youngsters hide behind protective skirts. Does this, you wonder, interfere with Olsen and Johnson? It does not. Their first allegiance is to their Art. They continue to gyrate, gesticulate, jig. The Show Must Go On. In fact they are hardly conscious of the storm of interest they have created. When they are satisfied with their act, when they have developed it to perfection, they ring down an invisible curtain, silently grasp each other by the hand to signalize their success, and walk off. when are ADVERTISEMENT CHARLES KING — IRENE DELROY — LOWELL SHERMAN NOAH BEERY — LOTTI LODER. From the stage play by Elmer Rice. Adaptation and dialogue by Joseph Jackson. Directed by Archie Mayo. THE MERRY ADVEN. TURES OF GOOFY GOBS WHO GO DOWN TO THE SEA IN GONDOLAS WARNER BROS. presext OH SAILO BEHAVE: with OLSEN and JOHNSON America’s Funniest Clowns Two Column Ad—Style J—Cut or Mat (Sunday Science Article) TRAVELLING MIKE SOLVES GRAVE RECORDING PROBLEM FOR “OH SAILOR BEHAVE!” SAYS MAYO Mike, Considered Necessary Evil in Early Days of Talkies, Now Accomplishes Wonders in Voice Reproduction By JACK LEWIS A traveling mike is no wandering Hibernian, any one connected with motion picture production will explain. It is the slang for a microphone which moves along pulleys and so records the speech of the persons in the talking picture as they walk, run, quarrel, love, and in general release their physical and psychie energy. Archie Mayo, who directed “Oh Sailor Behave!”? Warner Bros. special Vitaphone comedy now playing at the Theatre, a Warner Bros. director, calls attention to the new problems advanced by this small but important addendum to screen technique. One of the most striking of camera shots in the silent screen days was that of a moving camera above the heads of players while in action. One literally obtained a bird’s-eye view. And even apart from moving shots, there were scores of varied stationary angles that amazed audiences. This is all changed by the introduction of the microphone. At first it was considered by directors as a necessary evil. As the mike hangs directly above the heads of the artists, the camera is restricted to horizontal angles. If these atigies were too pronounced, the “mike” would be revealed in the picture. Thus elevated shots were “out of the picture.” The traveling mike was the technical solution. It was, and still is “WHEN IN ROME IDO AS I LIKE,” SAYS LOTTI LODER The Viennese are different. Their pilgrimages to Rome are characterized not by any willingness to do as the Romans do, but by the institution of such sweeping reforms that the Romans, when in Rome, do ag the Viennese do. Which paradox may be explained by the simple statement, “Lotti Loder came to Hollywood.” Now shortly after Miss Loder’s arrival in the land of the rising pun she discovered, with something akin to deep chagrin, that her American friends spoke a strange tongue. The vehicle they employed for the expression of their ideas was foreign to her. © Obviously, something would have to be done if she was to make pictures in this strange language. Something was done. Directors, called into hurried conclave, decided that Miss Loder was to spend six hours every day studying with instructors in English, until every trace of her charming Viennese accent was gone and she could boast a large and_ practical vocabulary. The plan was outlined to the vivacious Lotti, a teacher selected, and a course of study mapped out. And then Lotti balked. Iconoclast that she was, she made use of the only negative lying around loose in Hollywood. No, she would not study English with a teacher. She hated school, she hated rules, she hated the whole profession of pedants. No, no, no! Indignation, consternation, furore, were the order of the day. It was “mike” that picks up the voices of the players and carries them to the recording apparatus, “In the past,” says Mr. Mayo, “it was possible for the players to move about while under the microphone, but only for limited distances, and as the cameras could only be moved from side to side the photographie angles were limited. With the travelling mike it is possible to photograph large scenes, such as _ ballrooms and hotel lobbies. “A good example of the new sound photography ig effectively brought to the sereen in several sequences of “Oh Sailor Behave!” In one particular scene, representing the crowded terrace of a large hotel, the camera remaing stationary and it is the “travelling mike,” that moves from one couple to another picking up> individual conversations sound effects, “The novel result is, in effect, a Series of sound closeups combined with a long shot, instead of the usual camera closeups and stati microphone, “It is now possible for players to move about quite freely and fee] that ‘mike’ is within speaking distance for the rotund little demon of talking pictures has been brought to task and, despite hig injured dig nity, he is moved here and there at will.” ee plain that Lotti would have to learn English, What to do? Lotti had an idea. She would learn English by way of the talking screen, In her little bungalow just outside Hollywood she had a projection room. In the projection room were a number of talking films. Why couldn’t she run off film after film, listen intently to the strange sounds these Americans made when they opened their mouths, and imitate these sounds? s “Preposterous,” said the directors, Utterly absurd,” spluttered a few language instructors. “Let me try,” pleaded Lotti. So reluctantly, they let her try. For two weeks Lotti sat in her little projection room listening to the voices of John Barrymore and George Arliss, repeating aloud the same words, jotting down every new addition to her vocabulary, and gloating over the results. At the end of her period of probation she returned to the Warner studio. “I have learned,” she said in perfectly good English,, “a few sentences. I will speak. You shall listen. You shall tell me, please, whether I can speak. Yes? No?” The verdict was unanimous and word was sent out that not only was Lotti to be given free rein for the next few months, but that her method of self-instruction was to be adopted by other Warner stars whose English needed grooming. Lotti left the studio wreathed in smiles. and onary