Walt Disney won the Academy cartoon award in 1937 with The Old Mill, in which he first made use of his "multiplane" camera, a device by which his drawings take on a startlingly three-dimensional character. The cartoon had no plot in the ordinary sense of the word, but the charm of its details and the beauty of the film as a whole made it irresistible.
In The Life of Emile Zola, Paul Muni again played a biographical role in a story that stuck largely to facts and was devoid of the usual "love interest." Again, as in the Pasteur picture, the experiment was successful. Muni's make-up as Zola was amazingly like the novelist's portraits, and his performance was brilliant, rising to memorable heights in the trial scene.
William Dieterle directed Zola for Warner Brothers in 1937, and the film won the Academy award for the best production of the year. Another striking performance in the film was Joseph Schildkraut's superb playing of the role of Dreyfus.
George S. Kaufman's and Edna Ferber's play of theatrical life, Stage Door, came to the screen with Katharine Hepburn in the leading role. The picture also gave Ginger Rogers a chance to show what she could do with an important straight part not calling for dancing ability.
By 1938 the Spanish Civil War was sufficiently uppermost in the public mind to attract Hollywood's attention. Walter Wanger produced Blockade, an original screen play by John Howard Lawsofi, which William Dieterle directed. It was a noble attempt, for the Civil War was a delicate subject, and not only to Hollywood. Henry Fonda and Madeleine Carroll were the principals.
Jackie Coogan had done Tom Sawyer in 1930. Eight years later, David O. Selznick introduced another Tom to the screen public, in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, in the person of Tommy Kelly, a newcomer who endeared himself at once.
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