Cinema Snapshots

Waikato Times, Volume 125, Issue 20958, 10 November 1939, Page 8

Cinema Snapshots

Parachute Jump Thrill For Film

Audiences Film audiences seeing Walter Wanger’s forthcoming Eternally Yours," co-starring Loretta Young and David Niven, are to be treated to the distinct thrill of diving headlong toward the New York World’s Fair from an aeroplane 15,000 feet up. Then a parachute will open and the ** audience ” will float earthward. Producer Walter Wanger has sent a camera crew and two aeroplanes from Hollywood to New York to film a spectacular delayed-opening parachute leap from a plane into a bay near the Fair site. To give the jump realism and natural thrills, a special camera has been constructed and encased, with its motor and a timeclock, inside a cork and rubber box. The camera equipment will be fastened to the parachute harness and will record the wild gyrations normally made by a man’s body on a delayed opening jump, the shock of the opening, and the swinging that pccurs until gravity steadies him down and he floats to safety. Since the camera always represents the audience in the filming of a picture, this unique parachute jump will give audiences the illusion of a thrill only about one in a million }s likely to experience in real life. Teamed Together For The First Time Teamed together for the first time in their sensationally successful careers, Errol Flynn and Bette Davis will come to the screen shortly in Warner Bros.’ lavishly produced film version of one of the biggest selling novels of recent years, “The Sisters," by Myron Brinig. Besides the two great stars in the leading roles, the cast of “The Sisters” boasts a really breath-taking array of names. The two sisters of Miss Davis are portrayed by Anita Louise and Jane Bryan, their parents are played by Henry Travers and Beulah Bondi, and other important roles are tilled by lan Hunter, Donald Crisp, Dick Foran,. Lee Patrick and Laura Hope Crews. Bette Davis swings to a sympathetic role after a succession of distinctly unsympathetic characterisaI tion, while Errol Flynn, her co-star, switches to the unsympathetic side of the ledger after a series of romantic roles. Besides Miss Davis there are two other Academy Award winners concerned in the filming of "The Sisters" —Tony Gaudio, the cameraman, and Jack Sullivan, assistant director who ably seconds Anatole Litvak in the production of this important and entertaining screen play. Brenda Joyce Newcomer The life of a movie actress is not at all a bed of roses, thinks Brenda Joyce, the Los Angeles co-ed. who suddenly found herself before a camera in a setting that was not nearly as glamorous as she had imagined. She was drenched the first day in a cloudburst. She tried rowing in a boat the second day against waves that carried her four feet in the air. She spent the third day in an earthquake that crashed a chandelier a few inches from her. After that she really settled down to hard work, playing opposite Tyrone Power, Myrna Loy and George Brent for 47 days in a rain that soaked ■ them to the skin eight hours every day. Miss Joyce is slender, blonde, brown-eyed and 18. She was very much the typical co-ed. pursuing her studies at the University of California, Los Angeles branch, when the family’s finances ran low at the end of the second year. She became a commercial photographer’s model and had worked about two days each week for nine months when Darryl Zanuck, 20th Century-Fox production chieftain, picked up a newspaper one day and saw her picture in an advertisement. He tested her three days later and signed her for the much-coveted role of Fern Simon in ‘‘The Rains Came,” the Louis Bromfield best-seller. ~ Balalaika” Scenes Ilona Massey has played her first scenes with Nelson Eddy in "Balalaika.” The “glamour girl” of film feminine singers, Miss Massey was forced to hide much of her loveliness in the opening scene for purpose of characterisation. Appearing as Lydia Marakova, a Russian girl of ■ pre-war days, she was costumed in a severe black dress, trailing the floor, and old-fashioned button shoes of 1911 vintage. Eddy plays Prince Peter Karagin in the film, which has Old Russia for a colourful background. The story deals with the romance and conflict between a member of the nobility and a girl whose family leads the revolutionary movement. Plentifully punctuated with eleven numbers and two opera sequences, "Balalaika” features such old favourites as “The Volga Boatman," * ’Carmen ,” “Scheherazade,” “Silent Night,’ and many Russian folk songs and melodies, “Ride, Cossack Ride,” “Love is My Game,” “Magic of Your Love” and “At the Balalaika." FLASHES (J. P. HUNTLEY replaces Barry Mae- * Kay in Paramount’s “ I’m From Missouri.” • • • • M-C-M are planning a re-make of A “ Within the Law." whioh starred II Joan Crawford.