COME OUT OF RETIREMENT.

Evening Post, Volume CXXVII, Issue 3, 5 January 1939, Page 16

COME OUT OF RETIREMENT.

When is a musical saw not a musical saw? "When it is all dressed up with gold plating, studded with gems, and mother of pearl, or sister of pearl, and costs a heck of a lot of money." So says Leon Weaver, and Leon should know. He is the senior member of the famed Weaver Brothers and Elviry, vaudeville headliners for over a score of years who went into retirement a few years ago and now have come back in Warner Bros.' forthcoming "Swing Your Lady," screen play based on the recent Broadway comedy. Leon, who originated and introduced the musical saw years ago (he has affidavits stretching from here to there to prove it), took a look at some of the saws offered him at the studio, and declared: "We're still using the saw I bought in 1916 for 7s 6d. It's a plain old ordinary handsaw, and that's all you need. I can take you into a store or rather those stores where prices don't run much more than ss, and pick you out a handsaw for 3s 6d that will make as sweet music as you want. Lots of people claim to have originated the musical saw, but I have plenty of proof I did. To impress people these pretenders claim you have to know a lot of tricks to play one. All you have to do is saw, and keep sawing." .

"Stunt work" in every major Hollywood studio suffered a three-day hiatus recently all because of a lawbreaking twelfth century Englishman. The Englishman was the legendary Robin Hood, whose escalades were the basis for a new Technicolor producduction at the Warner Bros, studios. And stunt work had to be called off on every other lot because Warners hired every available stunt man in the motion picture capital for one of the big scenes in the picture—a pitched battle between Robin's band of outlaws and the forces of the English Crown. More than a hundred of the daring souls who make a living (and quite a nice one, too) by risking life and limb in spectacular feats before the movie cameras were engaged for the battle scene, which took three days to film, as well as on some five hundred assorted huskies who put up quite a stiff contest with broadsword and quarter staff. While Errol Flynn and Olivia de Havilland, stars of the picture, Basil Rathbpne, Alan Hale, Claude Rains, Patric Knowles, and other principals looked on from the sidelines, Director William Keighley put them through the battle, staged when Robin Hood escapes from the custody of the minions of his enemy, Sir Guy of Gisbourne.