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Show Jfopf' i 'iij booking at HOLLYWOOD JACK CARSON, the actor, has a theory about actors. He thinks they should be allowed to act, not run to type.. If Jack ran a studio he'd knock a few show traditions into a cocked hat. He'd give comics a change or pace; make serious players or character char-acter actors of them. Those who consider themselves dramatic artists art-ists he would sum- . marily kick in;- S -A the pants by de- ;'UV ""vv-l flating them with $.3 light screwball : 0M roles. Then, be- 'A . J , fore they got used i" flir , to their new habili- o jt ments, he'd, cast i'yV them in entirely p:&Z- &$$t different kinds of JJv's V J parts. M, a. , "An a c t o r," jack Carson Jack says, "is a man who presumably can act, one who can impersonate any type of person with believability. "Guys I've known for years at Warners' came up to me after seeing see-ing 'Roughly Speaking' with 'Hey, Jackl I caught you last night. Why didn't you tell me you could act?' "At first I was sore as a hornet. 'Don't these people know they're insulting in-sulting me?' I told myself. Then I got to thinking it over and realized they weren't to blame. "They were simply following the old Hollywood custom of typing a guy and leaving him there to rot. "In the four years I'd been at Warners' I'd done little more than goon roles." Never Misses But there were those at Warners' who saw beyond Jack's make-up. And among them was Mike Curliz, their ace director, who thought Jack worth taking a chance on. So they took him off his bicycle he'd just completed five pictures in less than five months) and handed him the "Roughly Speaking" script. "They didn't have to tell me about that story," Jack says. "I'd read the book and loved it. It was human, real, believable. It was the stuff America is made of." Personally, I think Jack's roughneck rough-neck days in pictures are over. He's now just about finished a solid role opposite Joan Crawford in "Mildred Pierce." I honestly think since Mike Curtiz made them see the liht the studio realizes what it's got in Jack. Charles Kay country - bumpkined his way to obscurity. Warners should remember its insistence on typing Allen Jenkins and Frank Mc-Hugh Mc-Hugh as Damon Runyon characters. charac-ters. That didn't exactly help their careers, although both (overseas on USO tours) managed to maintain much of their popularity and are probably headed for comebacks. Edmund Lowe apparently "O, yeahed" a couple of times too often as Vic McLaglcn's tough buddy, because be-cause the customers typed him as the big, rough marine sergeant, and there he's stayed. Koscoc Ates' stuttering served him for years. He, too, needed a change of pace, which he didn't get. Came Up From Vaudeville Jack knows all about typing, because be-cause he came from- vaudeville, a questionable art form that finally gasped, rattled and died because it refused to change with the times. He and a guy named Dave Wil-lock Wil-lock teamed up while at Carleton college at Northfield, Minn., in a sort of happy chappy act that sprouted corn from every seam. Dave and Jack sang and danced and said what they hoped were funny fun-ny sayings in whatever public houses they could get bookings. From high school auditoriums they progressed to chautauqua, very smalltime vaudeville, and broadcast over four-watt four-watt radio stations until they reached comparative big time by appearing at the Paramount theater in New York City. That's when vaudeville gave up the ghost, and Jack, having nowhere else to go, headed for Hollywood. RKO, Jack's first bosses, must have seen him only as a man who should lose the girl in pictures, because be-cause for six straight films Jack lost Ginger Rogers to other guys, including includ-ing Ronald Colman. Warners must have liked the way Jack lost his ladies. At any rate they sent for him to lose Bette Davis to Jimmy Cag-ney Cag-ney in "The Bride Came C.O.D.," and that's how he became a Warners War-ners regular. It isn't," says Jack, "that I mind clowning. All I ask is that the clown- ing be natural believable perti-i perti-i nent to the role, not just some gag writer's idea of unrelated humor. In other words, if it belongs there I'll clown. Otherwise write me ; OUt." Better Late Than Never 'j When Lillian Gish is seen in "Susie J Slagle" she won't be able to do all the parts offered her.-Lillian has 1 quality. Don't forget John House- I man of the theater brought Lillian ): back to the screen. . . ; "The I I Road to Utopia" with Bob nope and King Crosby will get its Cist un- veiling in the Aleutians. Blng's J; trying to cut in his program just before the picture goes on. . . . Rochester has been added to "For Better, For Worse," at Metro. ' He J did "Broadway Rhythm" there. |