Saturday, November 28, 2015

Clyde Beatty #4

This looks like a movie publicity shot.

5 comments:

Ole Whitey said...

Yes, from The Big Cage, 1933. Roger can identify the actor.

Roger Smith said...

I can't ID the 2nd actor. The fellow in the striped shirt is the irrepressible Vince Barnett, in the role of Soupmeat. In his book of the same title, Beatty tells this story, highly representative of Barnett's endless hijinks on the set: In those days, cameras had not been quite so refined, and were installed in special giant boxes to muffle their noise. One such box was inside Beatty's arena when the animals were present, and Director Kurt Neumann and his cameraman were inside. At "Cut", Neumann asked Beatty if all the cats were safely sent home, and was assured they were. As Neumann confidently emerged, Vince Barnett and Andy Devine, dressed in lion and tiger suits, lunged at him, roaring for all their worth. Neumann almost tore the box up getting back inside. Once he realized the joke, he stormed back out threatening fisticuffs with the gagsters. In 1977, Mr. Barnett died at home in Encino, California, at age 73.

Roger Smith said...

Correction: Vince Barnett, born July 4, 1902, died at Encino Hospital Medical Center, on August 10, 1977. He was 75. He was an equal to Groucho Marx for insults and practical gags. At a fancy Hollywood party, he once deliberately greeted Greta Garbo with, "Oh, hello, Miss Hepburn." In a phony foreign accent, he posed as a famed European film director and told Jack Warner to learn the basics of movie making. People had to step between Barnett and Clark Gable when at a party thrown by Joan Crawford, Vince played a waiter who dropped a huge tray of food on purpose. He cursed to the horror of the guests, and extended the tray to Gable, saying, "Hey, you, the ape with the ears, hold this."

Ole Whitey said...

Roger: I didn't even notice the guy in the cap- isn't that Andy Devine?

Roger Smith said...

This photo doesn't zoom-in like I need, but in taking a 2nd long look, it has to be a young Andy Devine. He played the role of Scoops, long before he took on the heft familiar to us in later years.