In "Young in Heart"
Veteran Refuses Double in Dangerous Role Minnie Dupree, who has been identified with the New York stage for 50 years and who is making her first screen appearance in "The Young In Heart" at Selznick-International, is learning more about the movies than the cinema is about her. Mystery had not reared its head until a sequence was photographed in which Miss Dupree was to crawl across the floor of a wrecked railway coach at a 45 degree angle.
Properly solicitous, Richard Wallace, who is directing, offered to use a double, explaining to the actress that an elderly person should not be expected to perform such strenuous feats. In the conversation he said something about her being 63. Miss Dupree countered with the information that she was only 58 and that the task was not arduous.
The fine point of Wallace's honour "having been raised, he said that Who's Who in the Theatre" stated that she was born in 1875. She dismissed this by explaining that a vaudeville actress had adopted her name at the height of her career, that "Who's Who" was confused and that she was going to play her own part, It left the Selznick organization in quite a quandary, but it was decided not to push the matter further, She first appeared in Manhattan in "The Unknown" and in 1891 she was seen with Richard Mansfield in "Don Juan." She was in "Way Down East, "Women and Wine" and "Heidelberg, but she regards her outstanding success as that of the role of Helen Station in "The Musie Master," which David Belasco produced in 1904.
Technical Triumph The train wreck is one of those technical effects which Hollywood does so well. The wreckage, made entirely of wood, gives the illusion of realism. The rails, the trucks on which the cars are supported and the other metal appurtenances are properly deceitful. Erected on an enclosed stage, the scenery is built in perspective and within 45 feet the tails converge to a point that gives a perfect illusion of distance.
The studio technicians had less trouble with the wreck than they did with a waterfall. An ideal location was found for a kennel outside of London, but if was near a cataract in the city's water supply in Franklin Canyon. The water spoiled the dialogue between Douglas Fairbanks, Jun., and Paulette Goddard, and so a wooden frame was built covering the 30-foot drop and the noise was smothered with blankets and tarpaulins, All the major problems of the picture have been solved but one. The cataract has been muffled, Mis Goddard has cut her long fingernails so that she can play the part of a seaetary, Janet Gaynor has been convinced that it is proper for her to appear in shorts, sufficient pen-gums have been corralled to recreate the Penguin Pool in the London Zoological Gardens, but whether Miss Dupree as Miss Fortune will live or die in the final scene has yet to be ettled. The picture will be previewed at first with the elderly character's death, but if the audience disapprove, another and less dismal ending will be used.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.