Prix de Beaute
| Filmed after The City Gone WIld, but released prior to it, was Now We're In The Air, the third and least, of three armed service adventure-comedies teaming Wallace Beery and Raymond Hatton (Behind the Front, We're in the Army Now). Cast as identical twin sisters named Griselle and Grisette (one of whom, we're asked to believe, is German-while the other is French!), Louise particularly enjoyed working with the Missouri-born Beery, with whom she realized a dark, PLains-bred sense of humor. Louise observed that their director, Frank Strayer, did little but stand silently behind the camera, allowing Beery full reign over the slapstick proceedings. Meanwhile, Eddie Sutherland was reunited with W.C. Fields on a disastrous remake of the 1914 mack Senett classic, Tillie's Punctured Romance, many of whose problems Brooks attriubted to her director-spouse's habitual lack of preparation. Finally, with her Beery/Hatton movie completed, a bored and idle Louise returned to New York for a prolonged "business and clothes-buying" vacation. By now, Hollywood was speculating about the Sutherlands' togetherness-or lack thereof. What wasn't know was that in Manhattan Brooks had been enjoying the company of old friends, who included George Preston Marshall, her backstage Washington admirer or two years earlier. Louise would refer to their reunion as "the most fateful encounter of my life." |
Copyright: McKenna W. Rowe, 1997-2006