The Cowboy Quarterback (Warner Bros.) (1939)

WARNER BROS. Nomination For the How! of Fame ! You'll want him longer laughs! a Passing t ‘ ggRETO™ me “Ceircnassrsee™ OE, I -..for Eleven More Ads to Choose from On Next 2 Pages Lead Story Strand Football Comedy Features Bert Wheeler and Marie Wilson “The Cowboy Quarterback” is the promising title of the Warner Bros. picture with Bert Wheeler, Marie Wilson and Gloria Dickson in the leading roles which opens next Friday at the Strand Theatre, and the promise in the title is fully realized in the production itself. The story has a football background, the hero is a fellow from the cow country who becomes a great quarterback, and the indication in the juxtaposition of these two circumstances that the film is a comedy is certainly no false promise, for the picture is riotous comedy from start to finish. Of course, the fact that Wheeler and Miss Wilson have prominent parts in the proceedings is plenty of advance notice in itself that the new Warner picture is distinctly a funfilm. As a matter of fact, neither of these first-rate comedians has ever before had a role better suited to their talents as film funsters than the parts they have in “The Cowboy Quarterback.” And there are other such fine comedians in the cast as William Demarest, DeWolf Hopper and Eddie Foy, Jr. The new picture is strikingly different from all previous football films in that it is not about college football. There is no “dying for dear old Alma Mater” in it, for it’s about the very practical business of profes sional football, where all the fighting and metaphorical dying is for cash on the line. So when Demarest, as_ the manager of the mythical Chicago Packers, hears tales about the great prowess of a broken-field runner out somewhere in the open spaces, he hunts up the “phenom” and tries to sign him for the Packers. The great player is none other than little Bert Wheeler, and he is reluctant to leave town for the great rewards promised because meanwhile, he fears, Handsome Sam, a _ drugstore cowboy played by Hopper, will steal his girl, who is the vacuous Miss Wilson. Demarest, however, persuades the couple to become engaged and gets Bert’s signature to a contract by promising to take Marie along with the team. He lives to regret the promise, for it soon develops that Marie not only supervises everything Bert does, including his football playing, but makes a general pest of herself. How Demarest contrives to send Marie home and yet keep Bert in Chicago out of trouble and able to lead the Packers to the championship is told as the story unfolds. Based on a stage play by Ring Lardner and George M. Cohan, the screen play was written by Fred Niblo, Jr., and the production was directed by Noel Smith. Retains Lucky Chair Bert Wheeler, in moving to the Warner Bros. studio to film ‘The Cowboy Quarterback,”? which opens next Friday at the Strand Theatre, brought with him his lucky make-up table chair. It looked a bit out of place in a fancy modernistic dressing room suite, being of the old, battered kitchen variety — but it has been with him since he made his original screen hit in the musical, “Rio Rita.” Blocking with His Eye Got Wheeler A Shiner Even a football can give you a black eye. Bert Wheeler found that out one day when he blocked a kick booted by that famed pro pigskinner, “Dutch” Hendrian. It was for a scene in the Warner Bros. pro football comedy, “The Cowboy Quarterback,” coming to the Strand Theatre next Friday. Amid yells from several hundred extras of “block that. kick, block that kick,” Bert did — with his right eye, which got the speeding oval point first. A little treatment from a first aid man, and sympathy from Marie Wilson and Gloria Dickson, and the comedian was back in the field again. But his eye was considerably swollen and beginning to discolor by evening. Hendrian heads an agegregation of famous professional grid stars who play featured roles in the Wheeler film along with fourteen men from the University of Southern California’s mighty 1939 football squad, led by Ambrose Schindler. Advance Feature Comedian Bert Wheeler's LifeSi tory Reads Like An Horatio Alger Book The College of Hard Knocks tossed Bert Wheeler right out on his ear. He climbed to his feet and found himself in the show business. Horatio Alger would have called his story, “From Newsboy to Comedian.” His life story reads like an Alger book. Born in the toughest part of Paterson, N. J., Bert discovered that he had a rollicking, happygo-lucky dad named James Wheeler, who loved to gamble but seldom won. And for a mother, the former Kitty Foley, a beautiful Irish girl of sixteen. She died a year after Bert was born. The future actor first sang in a choir, and then with a Gus Edwards vaudeville troupe which included Georgie Jessel. He next got a job in Harry Gribbon’s musical, ‘The Gingerbread Man,” in which he sang and danced. There followed engagements with one of the Gus Hill companies, playing “Mutt and Jeff,” (48 straight weeks of one-night stands!) and other stock and musical bookings. He married a little 18-year-o!d actress, Margaret French, and their company promptly folded. They launched their own act back in Bert’s home town, but it wasn’t successful. For three lean years they existed on Bert’s roller-skating engagements. Following an unsuccessful run at the Palace Theatre in New York, he and his wife found themselves owing much_ back rent to New York’s kindliest landlord, Bartholdi, proprietor of that famous old theatrical boarding house which stood where Loew’s State Theatre now stands. Here Bert met another flat-broke Irishman, Mickey Moran, got up the vaudeville act “Me and Mickey,” and clicked tremendously. The Palace, where they had once flopped, became a scene of triumph. But this was tinged with sorrow for Bert for the time, because his wife and partner left him. He went into the Ziegfeld Follies, with such stars as Paul Whiteman, Fannie Brice, Ann Pennington and others, and was a big hit. His top stage success was “Rio Rita,” which saw him teamed with the late Robert Woolsey. Presently Bert married Bernice Speers. When a film company purchased “Rio Rita” as the basis for a big musical, Wheeler and Woolsey were included in the deal. Their success in this film was followed by many others and continued until the death of Woolsey a year ago. Wheeler’s first picture in what he sees as an entirely new phase of his career is Warner Bros.’ football comedy, “Cowboy Quarterback,” in which he is featured with Marie Wilson and Gloria Dickson. The picture opens at the Strand Theatre on Friday. (Publicity Continues on Page 4)