The Daily Alaska empire., 1938-07-20
FRANK LEAvITT, HEAVYWEIGHT, A
 BACK IN MOVIES
Tips Scales at 320 Pounds Struts His Stuff with
 Joe E. Brown
By ROBBIN COONS

HULL WOOJ, July ZU.-fTdIlk Leavitt 320 pounds of him, is in the movies again, and the sound stages are grooming should be grunt- ing-in welcome
 Frank is big boy from Georgia by way of West 43rd Street, New York City: where he was born nearly AT years ago-June 30, 1891. Even at that early date in his ca reer he loomed big and one half pounds. He kept on looming. By the time he was IA he was big enough to fool the U. S. Army into letting him join And that, in a way, was what led him surely into the art of acting-and eventually, therefore, into Hollywood. For he took up wrestling even then, and now
 Champ-In Pictures
 In Hollywood he has a role to his liking at last. He has played it in real life many times, but there were usually hecklers to dispute the niceties of his performance, even his claims to it. In "The Gladiator" Frank Leavitt is play ing the role of UNDISPUTED worlds h heavywe ight wrestling champion, and the novelty is tre- mendous. Leavitt will grapple for io al ai hinmacf fn date-with Joe E. Brown. And the outcome of the bout-up to the lat est final" script-was not yet ''in the big" Which also, if the wreS- tling-baiters can be needed, has its elements of novelty.
 Leavitt stands unique among film actors, new and old. There are actors as bulky, there are even ac- tors who deliberately wear boards off screen and on. But Leavitt is the only movie actor who expects to be called by his wifes name rather than his own. You'd never think of calling Franchot Tone MT. Crawford" or Dick Powell MT. Blonden,' but Leavitt built his fame as MT. Dean" His wife down Georgia way still is known as Doris Dean, and Frank (when he isn't MT. Dean) as Man Moun- tain Dean.
 This, he explains, was due to his wrestling tour of Germany. The name although his fami- ly had been Tanks for generations was suspect in Hitler's Germany He had to use Dean to get his mat license As his wife was his man. ager, anyway, that seemed the right name to use. He had met her in Miami, Fla, while traffic-cop- ping. He had wrestled as well as been wounded during the war, and punctured kidney in an early match thereafter The job in traffic served during recuperation.
 Doubled For Laughton
 Mrs Dean piloted Frank through Germany and England, and it was in London that his talents as an actor-and his beard-were dis covered simultaneously. Doubling for Charles Laughton in a brief wrestling sequence for Henry the Eighth" Frank couldn't keep his false beard on, so grew his own and kept it. Whether that started it or not, his ring performances have | caused certain sports observers to laud him as the greatest of all &C., tors. But until now no studio has given more than passing recogni- tion to his talents.
 Leavitt may be prevented from capitalizing on his newly won film success. Stern duty calls. He's run ming for the Georgia legislature, and must hie himself back home to make speeches and kiss babies those not too frightened He denies that his spectaeles are being used to read up on political matters. What politician" he demands, lever had to read anything?"
 Meanwhile, among his cherished possessions is a tent-like full dress suit. A movie actor never knows when he'll need one, as he told Da-