Evening star., 1940-02-08

licity, with everyone happy to print
how things really were in the
making of drama.
In His Girl Friday" Columbia
Pictures and Producer Howard
Hawkes. go even further. In a big
type foreward they make clear any
assumption that real newspaper peo-
pie are like the ones in the film is
too silly for words. Such an unnice
lot of boys and girls are as different
from the real thing as chalk from
cheese, or vice versa, Columbia wants
audiences to know.
And apparently we want audiences
to know it, too, or we would not
carry on like this.
\; X X x
The Western picture, true to its
genre, with fine outstanding heroes,
pure wind-rippled heroines and mus
tached villains. is one of the most
enduringly popular forms the cinema
industry ever discovered. Played
straight, however, it is not precisely
the most successful sort of thing to
lay before sophisticated audiences.
They won't take little Nell seriously
ana that bothered producers for a
long time until the thought struck
them that maybe they would take
her comically.
The result has been a succession
of pictures in which some of the
screens most skilled comedy talent
participates in satirizing the scene
where men are men and all women
are lovely doves. 1t was just such
a picture. "Destry Rides Again" I"
that made Marlene Dietrich vir-
tually household word again after
her career had turned into debacle
1t is just such picture, too, which
first teams those geniuses of comedy,
Mae West and w. c. Fields. My
Little Chickadee,' which sounds as
if the title flowed right off Fields
wagging tongue, is the film in ques-
ton. 1t comes to Keith's today.
The answer to that question,
who hasn't seen Tobacco Road'?"
apparently is-a great many WASH
ingtonians. The opening of the
National box office seat sale today
finds advance mail order reserva-
tions in excess Of those at the same
time last year.
The company which opens at the
National on Monday in this most
enduring of dramas is that veteran
road group headed by John Barton.
He is the uncle of James Barton,
who played the same drama on
Broadway for so long that he began
to talk like Jeeter Lester off-stage.
The play has become virtually a
Barton family trait after all these
years.
1t is quite honestly that John
Barton comes by his Southern ac-
cent in Jack Kirkland's play. He
was born in Norfolk where, if they
don't talk like Georgia share-crop-
pers. they still manage one of the
most beguiling drawls in the whole
drawl belt Mr.. Barton remained
around Norfolk long enough to
create for himself an accent problem
when he finally decided to go
'nawth" and have himself a stage
career.
swiss Family Robinson" first in
dependent production by Gene
Towne and Graham Baker, Holly
woods most prolific writer's, is an
nounced as Keith's attraction to
follow My Little Chickadee" .
Heading the family are Thomas
Mitchell and Edna Best, the former
of whom should by now have estab-
lished himself as the cinema's busi-
est actor Carole Lombard still
has no time for comedy, a form
against which she rebelled two pic
lures ago :. Her latest, Vigil in
the Night" is another one of those
serious dramatic roles :. An organ
logue by Hermon Hill has been
added to the Hiser's bill starting
tomorrow Opening night per-
formance of Cornelia Otis Skinner's
Edna His Wife" will be benefit for
the scholarship fund of Washing