TALKIES

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 2, Issue 197, 9 August 1940, Page 7

TALKIES

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BAR BRAWL IN "DODGE CITY" I,EAVES WRECK BEHIND When Michael Cuvtiz directed the Technieolour production "Gold is Where You Find It," he surpassed himself Avith his colourful interior shots showing S:m I'iancisco's famous Poodle Dog liar room in the eighties. With its pyramid of fruits and delicate viands, its glowing glistening and bubbling drinks in crystal glasses, its naperies of ivory and cream, and its rainbow of fancy drinks that ranged from coral-col-oured pink ladies through golden Bronx and green chartreuse to purp lish Blue Blazers, Curtix/s bar room set the industry's standard for cyeiilling opulence in swizz circles. Mr Curtiz took a different tack, however, with the bar room that Warner Bros allowed him to with in "Dodge City." This was a bar room of the lS7o's, and the scene was set in old Dodge City, Kansas, U.S.A., when that settlement represented the jumping ofY place for west-bound covered waggons. Curtiz's new bar room was, in fact, Dodge City's famous Lady Gay; only, for film purposes, the name was changed to Gay Lady. Instead of the plush, the tapestries, £1000 nudes which were fram ed on the walls in the Poodle Dog, Curtiz and "Limey'* Flews, who is Mike's chief property man, built their Dodge City emporium in plain wood and'gave it an array of p r j tent looking bottles. This time, however, Mr Curtiz will overpower your attention from a new approach. His bar room Pn "Dodge City" will become memorable because it is the for the biggest, heartiest, completest and most authoritative of all tho saloon brawls ever filmed. Cowboys, dance gir]s, gunfighters, poker \players, bartenders, farmers, soldiers, Indians, sheriffs, dogs, guns, knives, clubs, chairs, bottles, tables, lamps, fists. teeth mingled in this glorious melee. Michael Curtiz, who built the showiest saloon in Technieolour "t. "Gold Is Where You Find It," made the showiest wreckage of one in Technicolour in "Dodge City."