UNCLE AND NEPHEW

Wairarapa Times-Age, 24 May 1940, Page 9

UNCLE AND NEPHEW

APPEAR IN FILM. Wallace Beery and his nephew, Noah Beery Junr., appear together on the screen for the first time' in “Twenty Mule Team.”

A DOG TEST ‘ FOR PART AT HOLLYWOOD. Sixteen dogs sat up and barked their best for a canine casting director at a Hollywood studjo recently. And when the “begging” and “speaking" and retrieving at the word of command were all over, a black cocker spaniel by the name of Smoky Long Ears had won the part of Jasper, ghost-beholding dog of “Rebecca,” Daphne du Mauricr’s novel produced for the screen by David O. Sclznick.' Most exacting test for the part was the ability to “bark at nothing” when the trainer gave a silent signal. Many dogs, it is chimed, can be taught to bay furiously at a trainer’s accomplice off stage, but the trick of barking at empty space is a difficult one for a doji to learn. Such a trick was essential in "Rebecca,” a psychological melodrama, presenting Laurence Olivier, Joan Fontaine, Judith Anderson, George Sanders and Reginald Denny. But when Henry East, Smoky’s trainer, lifted his hand in a peculiar way the little black dog leaped forward belligerently as if to attack an unseen bui'glar. “We trained him by planting an electric buzzer under the carpet, and making him bark at the noise,” said East. “Later, he learned to bark at a given signal.”