The Irene Dunne Site
A Perfect Lady Goes Wild And Western
by DEE LOWRANCE - Hollywood
When the exquisite Irene Dunne makes herself into a human mud-pie; when Ralph Bellamy goes around drawling "pard" to all he meets; when a film press agent sprouts such fantastic folk legends that a state´s governor is impelled to refute them outright -- something is wacky in Hollywood.
But 450 long miles seperate the Superstition Mountains from the film city. Arizona is a world away from California. The non-sensical happenings on the fringe to the real Gold Country are the children of a location trip -- nothing more.
To outsiders, even sometimes to actors themselves, location trips are a vacation. You pick a section of a film studio and ship it as many miles away as you need. Then you have a location, which is just what it sounds like -- realism for moviemakers.
Some 40 miles outside of Phoenix, Ariz., the spirits of dead war-wooping Indians, bewhiskered bullwhackers, promising prospectors, and solitary sourdoughs are having the time of their ghost life. They are watching some 90 newcomers who have settied down for a month´s shooting schedule on a movie comedy which started out to be called "Sheltered Lady." After Irene Dunne met the mud it was re-named "Lady In A Jam."
The dreade Apache Indians held this 30-mile moutain range as the dwelling place of their thunder gods. Weird sounds come down out of the hills at night; whailings and whispering. Lights play along the conyons and flicker on the hillsides.
The Lost Dutchman mine, allegedly behind the Superstition range, has drawn hundreds of gold-seeckers. Today men, and even women, live alone in scrubby shacks and prospect alone.
Tall tales are told of the Superstition Mountains. Tales of men who have gone into their fastness after lost gold mines; whose bodies have been found years later -- headless, tales of the heads turning up miles away, drilled with a bullet.
If all of this happened more than a century ago, you could sniff and forget it. But as late as 1931, one Adolph Ruth set out into the Superstitions in June. In December of the same year, and archoelogical expedition stumbled upon a bullet-pierced skull, the rest of what had been Ruth was found three miles away!
The simpl re-telling of some of these tales by Mervin Houser, press agent of "Lady In A Jam," brought a horse-sense speech out of Arizona´s lanky Governor Osborn:"You know how legends are," he said, wagging his head sagely, "you can´t always believe them, can you?"
Good haunting ground for movie material. Especially good hunting for a srewball heiress (Irene Dunne) who drunken-sailors away every cent she has, then goes to Arizona to look up her grandmother (Queenie Vassar) who owns a mine there. With her, disguised as her chauffeur, is the handsome Patric Knowles, a psychiatrist who salts the worked-out mine with gold nuggets to roake the heiress start her first bout with honest labor. Later a cowboy sweetheart, in the person of Ralph Bellamy, turns up.
That´s as much of the plot of "Lady In A Jam" as anyone is likely to know until it is cut and finished. The way the writer-director-producer of the project, Gregory LaCava, works, it´s a wonder that much is known yet.
Some week in advance of the actual location trip, LaCava went into the desert country that cradles Phoenix and found the site he wanted at the foot of the Superstitions.
"Built me," LaCava then ordered, "a ghost town. I need a saloon, grandmother´s house and a mine."
LaCava hopped a plane back to Hollywood, his head busy with the need of a plot. His art director and assistans huddled. For weeks they scoured the desert, near and far.
A complete, ramshackle, fallingdown, but authentic settlement topped the hillock when LaCava returned. There was a rough house that Granny calls home in the film, ready for indoor scenes should the Arizona sun fail. There was a weather-beaten saloon, with a sagging front porch, boarded up with windows and general air of ancient decay.
Three lean-tos, with rusted, corrugated iron roofs, outlined the rough road that leads to the central attraction -- the scaffolding, gray, time-worn and real, of the mining equipment atop the mine shaft.
"Now to work," said La Cava.
The set of "Lady In A Jam"
He sent for the rest of the troupe, hauling them out of Phoenix where they had been happily putting nickels into slots of juke boxes. This was just the first of many such treks to location from the hotel. The only difference was, the others all started when the dawn was barely streaking the sky.
Two buses and six long, private cars make up the daily parade. Crammed into them are the 60 odd grips, props, camera assistants, electricians, carpenters, and experts of all varieties that are needed for even the least of films. Make-up and wardrobe men and women, the script girl, the head camera-man the assistant directors filled the cars.
Next came the cast -- Miss Dunne ("Mary Lou Wham" to the company); the hero, Patric Knowles, called his "Jumping Juvenile" at first by LaCava and later winning the title of "Elmer" when he was a good boy, the 70-year old stage actress, Queenie Vassar, and little Jane, La Cava´s small daughter, with lovely red-gold hair and a cheerful, freckled grin, who is making her debut as an actress in this picture.
For the first days of the shooting, Ralph Bellamy, who is to play a cowboy to end all cowboys, a caricature of a chaps-wearing he-man, was left behind. He was supposed to soak up atmosphere. For that task, he donned a succession of rainbow shirts, high-heeled boots, and made friends of the local cowpunchers, captivating their womenfolk almost to the point of embarrassement.
Bellamy, owl-serious in his study of the Old West, got the surprise of his young life his first day in Phoenix. Off in a corner of his hotel lobby, he spotted three authentic-looking characters -- old-timers, complete with unshaven bristles, hoary clothes and traditional quids. They were talking with the fire of gold hunters, their voices conspiringly low.
Bellamy watched them until he was stiff with standing. He noticed the way they moved their hands and used their mouths, intending to use the characteristics in his own Western character for the screen. He wanted to stalk them but they showed no signs of leaving, so finally, he asked the desk clerk about them. "Those!" snorted the clerk. "Hell, they just came from Hollywood -- going out to work in that movie they are making!"
The first few days on location passed quietly. Queenie Vassar found some words hard to remember, but it wasn´t serious. Patric Knowles won the name of "Elmer" and Jumping Juvenile was forgotten. LaCava turned up every morning with the exact words of today´s shooting when there hadn´t been a glint of those words in his eye the night before.
Came the day when Irene Dunne was to fall into the muddy mine shaft. Miss Dunne is always treated as her publicity has suggested -- as a "perfect lady."
She is attractive, neat, clean. She is poised and equal to any situation. She is almost icebox-bred in her elegance. Miss Dunne shocked the cartload.
They mixed the mud carefully in huge boilers. It had to be one part desert earth, one part water and one part oil. Without the oil it would cake and crack off in 10 minutes -- so hot is the desert sun, so dry the desert air.
Miss Dunne sat upright. The assistants, smiling as apologetically as Winston Churchill about to ask Queen Elizabeth to play the leap-frog to win a bet, slathered the mud on. She didn´t wince.
Through her mud-caked eyes, she smiled her famous, crinkled smile. Then, mud from hair to well-turned ankle, Miss Dunne stepped into her scene. They did it once, they did it again and again.
Lunch was called. The company retired to the board shack set aside for the dishing up of food sent over every day from the Adam´s hote. Only washing her face, Miss Dunne ate with the rest of the -- a typical location meal of fried fish, string beans, spaghetti and meatballs, home-fried potatoes and cherry pie.
Then more mud was splattered over the blonde loveliness of one of Hollywood´s top stars. The scene began once more -- but wasn´t this were we came in?
(Montana Standard, 03.29.1942)