Detroit Free Press from Detroit, Michigan • Page 16

16 THE DETROIT FREE PRESS FRIDAY, MAY 14. 194S Amusements. STAGE TO SCREEN War Is No Barrier Cabin in Sky' Gets Fine Film Treatment No, Fiorello, It Isn't You in the Movie BY FREDERICK C. OTHMAN Cnltrd Press Correspondent Chance On Love" will repay a visit to the United Artfc.s where the picture opened BY LEN G. SHAW Free Press Motion Picture Editor Hollywood has again demon Joe, awakening from a dream that found him dead and on the road to perdition, gives evidence of redemption in answer to Petunia's petitions.

Even to ordering his Thursday. The superb artistry strated how good a job it is capable of doing when it lends itself with which she is so richly en down for armed service a kind, hearted editor makes them air raid wardens. The wildest fears of the townspeople are exceeded by the trouble these xanies cause in their mistaken idea of what constitutes duty and through their unflagging seal, in which there is sometimes an almost pathetic note. The climax is reached when they stumble on to a band of saboteurs intent on destroying a magnesium plant, and thereby become heroes. There are others involved in the mad melange, but after watching Laurel and Hardy nothing and nobody else matters.

INHERITS MUSIC Ida Lupino has just received from England, the sheet music of her father's last hit musical "Crazy Days" which was a substantial success in London. seriously to transferring a stage HOLLYWOOD, May 13 Note dowed is constantly in evidence, not only in her interpretation of play to the screen. This time it is Cabin in the Sky," with Metro- the songs but in the emotional power she displays, as well as to hizzonor, Fiorello LaGuardia: Oscar Homolka is not going to star in a movie comedy called "The Little Flower." Definitely Goldwyn-Mayer as its translator even if at great length, for it is a long pictur- There are dozen other principals to add their bit to this unusual entertainment, with. Louis Armstrong as the Trumpeteer, Duke Ellington and his orchestra, and the Hall Johnson Choir contributing musically. That frantically funny pair, Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy, quite outdo themselves in the accompanying feature, "Air Raid Wardens." A couple of small town characters who go into bankruptcy as regularly as they start in business, when Uncle Sam turns them into screen the gayer manifestations.

SIMPLE STORY terms. With not. precious dice and a ticket on the Irish Sweepstakes-burned. ETHEL UNLIMBERS The action ranges from domestic scenes to the fervor of a religious levival and the frenzy of a dance hall, where Petunia pits her attractions against those of the beguiling Georgia Brown, and un-limbers in a dance with "Bubbles' Sublett that is just one step this Anderson is always in character Ethel Waters, Eddie (Roches as the weak-willed Little Joe, All he'll do is play a mayor in a film yet to be titled. He can't help it, can he, if he wears a big ter Anderson amusing and appealing.

And when Lena Horne as the light-skinned fa -f black hat, races to all the fires and Lena Horne heading the long cast, you temptress turns the heat on him behind his own private siren and with a skill that makes her outstanding you can't blame him for spend3 the rest of his time battling side of the jungle. The dream sequences are handled effectively, would have rea-s to expect the newspaper reporters" forgetting everything else, includ "TIT uwiiih i 'ftv YyTv fey vl something out ing his faithful Petunia. No sir, Your Honor, that's not Oscar's fault. He's just playing any old mayor of any old Amer 5 BIG STAGE SHOWS: 11:50 A.M.. 2:30 P.M., 5:15 P.M..

8:00 P.M.. 10:30 P.M. of the ordinary in the way of ican city of about popu Doors Open 9:30 M. lation. And he doesn't want any acting.

There need be no fear of disappoint The story of "Cabin in the Sky is treated with a simplicity and an absence of conventionality characteristic of the people it projects, and their conception of the forces of good and evil that upon occasion become to them real figures. TODAY1 lawsuits, or threats of same. INDEPENDENT FELLOW ment on this naw score. They, and everyone else en gaged, catch the spirit of the play Little Joe, with his love of admirably, and bite deep into their This Homolka is the right man for such an enterprise. Not only is he a first-class actor, but he's saved his money, and if a movie is no good he can and does tell gambling and his susceptibility to the charms of a sultry siren who is an active ally of Lucifer, Jr.

individual duties, bringing forth characterizations that carry on consistently through the material and the spiritual phases of the picture. in the person of Rex Ingram, is i constant source of concern to his deeply religious wife, Petunia. But The General, who is played by Just to hear Ethel Waters render "Cabin in the Sky," "Happiness Is Just a Thing Called Joe" and "Taking a Kenneth Spencer, is constantly at Petunia's side, and finally Little PB nBaW PrV HIP DO the producer thereof to go jump. He came here from England in 1937 to do "Ebb Tide" for Paramount. This was supposed to be a big-time movie, which somehow bogged down.

Homolka said the producers were nice to him, and cordial and polite, but that they always seemed to be interested in golf, or horse races, when he wanted to make movies. This was discouraging; so discouraging that Honolka returned to Europe. Not until 1939 did he return to New York, where he took unto himself a bride, the daughter of Eugene Meyer, publisher of the Washington Post. He also received offers from Universal Studios to play in a shoot-'em-up opry starring Mar- NOW -l .1 The stress of warfare only strengthens the love of Pierre Aumont and Susan Peters in "Assignment in Brittany," a stirring story of espionage in occupied France that will be an early arrival. Homolka, was a whiz-bang.

But by the time it was completed, there were war pictures of similar theme on view all over the land. The picture still has not been released. Homolka doesn't know when it will be. Not that he's worried. that he liked: "Mission to Moscow." In it he played Ambassador Litvinof.

It wasn't such a big role, but he liked it. Then Paramount (under new managers who didn't play golf) asked him to go into a film called "Hostages." This, according to MASONIC AUDITORIUM TICKETS AT BOX-OFFICE LAST 3 DAYS S. HUROK presents DETROIT'S MOST EXCITING MUSIC and BALLET EVENT CV LOTtn first hm I Vfl 3i fi rfTWi i fiY AT REGULAR Ml VWCtJlf tLLa4 PRJCESJX torn too tough to die SjftfeTJfSP" FRANCES GIFFORD KlJS lene Dietrich and titled "Seven Sinners." REGRETTED HIS ACT This was not the kind of picture for him. He was certain of it, but Universal was persuasive. And his wife never had been to California and one thing led to another and he found himself dodging bodies tossed through the air by John Wayne.

He was regretful of that movie. He promised himself not to try such a one again. Soon there was Sam Goldwyn knocking at his door, asking him to play the head professor in "Ball of Fire." Barbara Stanwyck was the ball. This sounded fine. Maybe it was.

"All I know was that It was the kind of picture that drove an actor batty," said Homolka. "They knew what the picture was to be about, but they didn't have any story. For eight weeks we fiddled around, while they wrote the script, piece by piece. It got so that we all came to work every morning, glaring at each other." CANT GET REST He returned to his sprawling white house in a canyon overlooking the city to take his ease, read his books and contemplate his collection of pictures by his Mexican pal, Diego Rivera. This was not to be.

He was too busy reading scripts submitted by hopeful movie makers. Homolka turned down 12 pictures in a row. He finally got one DAW BALL by BALLET THEATRE SWAX LAKE, ROMEO AND HXIET, BLUEBEARD TOM'W. Princes Aurora, Pillar of Fire, Pa it (luatre, Helen of Troj SI N. MAT.

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