“Terror On Women”

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 13, Issue 28, 3 December 1948, Page 3

“Terror On Women”

Anne Baxter, recently, received a membership card, neatly ~^o r aved, from the “Terror On Women” Club. William Wellman the director, is the president. He granted her the card, because she let Gregory Peck, Richard Widmark and John Russell manhandle her in “Yellow Sky,” without a whimper. Peck repeatedly threw her on the ground for a rough-and-tumble love scene, Widmark took several punches at her, and Russell cuffed,her around. She had a wrenohed neck, several misplaced vertabrae and a well bruised body, by the time she had finished with the scenes. Wellman began mussing up screen beauties many years ago. In a day when every heroine kept every hair perfectly in place, he came forth with the radical idea that' maybe audiences would like to see their women mussed up! He had Jimmy Cagney rub a grapefruit in Mae Clark’s face in “Public Enemy.” The producers wanted to cut the scene out, but he persuaded them to take a chance, and the picture grossed more than two million, a huge sum for those days. In “A Star is Born,” Wellman insisted that Frederic March slap Janet Gaynor, and in “Nothing Sacred,” the women were given a hard time. Ginger Rogers became a member of the “Terror on Women” club when Helene Reynolds k.o.’d her in a six-day “battle” for “Roxie Hart.”