Frank Fouce ha recibido al fin credito Dirigible Frank Capra

Francisco Fouce: Embajador del cine mexicano en los EEUU (1899-1962)
Alejandra Espasande


Uno de los aspectos más importantes, y menos documentados, en la historia de la ciudad de Los Ángeles fue
protagonizado por la relación empresario-audiencia ejercida entre Francisco Fouce y la comunidad hispana
que encontró en sus teatros la oportunidad de asistir a presentaciones de películas y espectáculos en
español.

El objetivo de esta ponencia es documentar la influencia del cine mexicano en el desarrollo y expansión de la
exhibición de películas en español en los EE.UU. por medio de valorar la trayectoria del empresario Francisco
Fouce.

Se ilustrará el comienzo de la carrera de Francisco Fouce desde sus inicios en producciones de cine en
Hollywood, su incursión en la distribución y exhibición de cine mexicano en los EEUU, y el posterior desarrollo
del primer circuito de películas en español de Los Ángeles.

La ponencia documentará:

1. El desarrollo y la expansión del circuito de teatros Fouce desde sus inicios hasta la compra del
Teatro Million Dollar.
2. El impacto de los teatros de Fouce en el ámbito político, social y cultural de la colonia hispana de Los
Ángeles.
3. La relación del público con las estrellas del “cine hispano”, cine en español producido en Hollywood, y
las estrellas de las industrias del cine mexicano, argentino y español.
4. La función de una maquinaria de distribuidores, exhibidores, periodistas, y publicistas relacionados
con las empresas de Fouce. Entre otros aspectos, se abarcará: el establecimiento de Azteca Films y
Clasa-Mohme, primeras distribuidoras de cine mexicano en los EEUU, y la labor periodística de Armando
del Moral, fundador del servicio informativo Orbe y editor de La Revista Cine Gráfica.
5. La relación de Fouce con el gobierno Mexicano y Estadounidense, su labor en afianzar las relaciones
de ambas naciones, y su influencia en el fomento de la producción de cine mexicano durante la segunda
guerra mundial.
6. Las presentaciones de artistas mexicanos en los Teatros de Fouce y sus relaciones con el
empresario durante la época del cine de oro. Se enfatizará la relación de Fouce con el actor Jorge
Negrete, Secretario General de la Asociación Nacional de Actores (A.N.D.A.).
7. Las estrategias de publicidad enfocadas en promover estrenos de películas, programas de
variedades y espectáculos encabezados por artistas del cine y la música mexicana.
8. La colaboración de Fouce con el empresario Emilio Azcárraga Vidaurreta en relación a la
consolidación de la televisión en español en los EEUU.

La ponencia concluye el cometido de trazar la vida y obra de Francisco Fouce, pionero de la exhibición
de películas en español, cuya fe y labor en pro del cine mexicano alentó la sobre vivencia de dicha
industria durante periodos de crisis. Se concluye que el cine mexicano fue detonante para el progreso
de la carrera empresarial de Fouce, tanto como Fouce fue para el cine mexicano su máximo embajador
y aliado en los EE.UU.

La investigación se ha conducido por medio de entrevistas y el estudio de documentos provenientes de
archivos privados.


Dirigible ha recibido
al fin el credito que
Frank Fouce merece.*
Dirigible
1931

The early Frank Capra talkie Dirigible (1931) is a rousing adventure yarn about two Navy flyers Jack Bradon (Jack Holt) and Frisky Pierce (Ralph Graves) with a shared dream of conquering the South Pole. Determined to prove the merits of the dirigible to a skeptical public enamored with the airplane, Jack convinces Admiral Martin (Emmet Corrigan) to back his mission to travel to that remote pole. He entreats the daring, Navy fly boy Frisky to make the journey with him on a biplane hooked to the dirigible's underside.

A bond deeper than their male friendship mars the mission even before it begins. Exhausted by her husband's constant life-threatening adventures, Frisky's wife Helen (Fay Wray) begs Jack to stop her risk-taking husband from joining this assignment. In their two years of marriage, Helen tells Frisky, they have only been together two months. When Jack tells his buddy that he cannot join his expedition to the pole, the pair become enemies and Frisky's desire to conquer the pole is intensified. Shortly after undertaking his journey, however, Jack's dirigible crashes in a violent storm over Manhattan and Frisky makes his bid for aviation immortality. He takes up the endeavor alongside explorer Louis Rondelle (Hobart Bosworth). While flying over the South Pole with Louis in his aircraft, Frisky discovers there are limits to his abilities too when his plane and crew crash and are stranded in a world of ice and snow. It is then up to his former friend Jack to save the day.

Columbia produced three adventure pictures featuring the acting team of Ralph Graves and Jack Holt, including War Correspondent (1932), Flight (1929) and Hell's Island (1930). Dirigible - their fourth collaboration - was exceptional: a hugely successful production and worthwhile gamble of its large production budget of $650,000.

Frank Capra's rousing yarn loaded with Elmer Dyer's thrilling aerial footage and tense moments was the first from Columbia to debut at the prestigious venue Grauman's Chinese Theater. For a studio described by star Fay Wray as an "underdog," the success was a major coup.

Capra received a great deal of cooperation from the Navy in making Dirigible (they are thanked in the opening credits), who even loaned the production the enormous 650-foot-long dirigible Los Angeles to shoot key scenes.

The Los Angeles was docked in an enormous hangar in Lakehurst, New Jersey, which was also the site of an ugly, violent battle between the unionized New Jersey and New York film workers who demanded the right to work on the Hollywood financed local production. The men literally fought amongst themselves for work on the production. The Lakehurst site of the filming was the exact one where, six years later, the Hindenburg would take flight and then burst into flames.

Capra had studio head Harry Cohn backing his production all the way. Cohn even allowed the director to spend thousands of dollars to recreate the South Pole in, of all places, the sweltering San Gabriel Valley. The effect was achieved with tons of bleached corn flakes.

More difficult was recreating the effect in 95 degree weather of the puffs of breath that would erupt from Frisky and the other stranded explorers' mouths in the South Pole scenes. Small metal boxes containing dry ice were first placed into the actors' mouths, but made their speech garbled and hard to understand. Out of frustration, Hobart Bosworth took the dry ice from the box and shoved it angrily into his mouth. The results were instantaneous and Bosworth wailed in pain.

He had to be rushed to the hospital. He lost five teeth and part of his jawbone. Though no one suffered as miserably as Bosworth, donning fur parkas and beards in the stifling heat was punishing work for the other actors. Another irritation was the prop man's solution for displaying the effect of ice clinging to the explorers' beards; it was created by using heated paraffin painted onto their faces with a brush.

There were human obstacles to overcome too. Jack Holt, for instance, had a tendency to drink during filming. When he showed up drunk for an important scene in which he addressed the personnel of the Lakehurst Naval Air Station, Capra decided to teach Holt a lesson. He allowed Holt to proceed with his bobbing and weaving and his garbled speech. When Holt later saw the rushes he was so ashamed, he never again appeared on the Dirigible set drunk. A new scene was shot with a now-sober Holt and the production proceeded normally except for a tragic incident involving a grip working high in the rafters of the air hangar who fell to his death.

The story for Dirigible was penned by the famed Naval Academy graduate and aviator-turned-screenwriter Frank "Spig" Wead. John Ford, a friend of Spig's, based his film The Wings of Eagles (1957) on Wead's life story with John Wayne in the lead. Wead was a big proponent of speed competitions and air racing. And it was just those demonstrations of the Navy's might which pushed that service branch into the public consciousness. Public pressure then turned on Congress to fund the advancement of aviation technology. Wead transitioned into writing when he broke his neck in a fall in 1926 and became paralyzed (though he later regained the use of his forearms and legs). He would go on to receive two Academy Award nominations, for Test Pilot (1938) and The Citadel (1938).

Fay Wray, an actress who found her big break in Erich von Stroheim's The Wedding March (1928), was cast next to a succession of male luminaries in her career including William Powell, Gary Cooper, Fredric March and a giant gorilla. But Wray may have started off on the wrong foot with Capra when she showed up late on the first day of production on Dirigible. In her autobiography On the Other Hand: A Life Story she said she sensed the stress Capra was under due to the film's huge budget...and then there was the matter of the film's content. "The film had its own kind of weightiness even if the title could be defined as a craft 'lighter than air,'" Wray remarked. "The story was all strong, male-chauvinist, adventure stuff."

Wray, of course, was quite familiar with machismo, both human and primate, since her most famous role was one where she is cradled in a giant ape's paw in King Kong (1933). That role made her a screen legend, even if she was upstaged yet again, by a chest-beating creature with traditional ideas about a woman's place.

Producer: Harry Cohn, Frank Fouce*
Director: Frank Capra
Screenplay: Frank Wead, Dorothy Howell, Jo Swerling
Cinematography: Joseph Walker
Film Editing: Maurice Wright
Cast: Jack Holt (Cmdr. Jack Bradon), Ralph Graves (Lt ‘Frisky’ Pierce), Fay Wray (Helen Pierce), Hobart Bosworth (Louis Rondelle), Roscoe Karns (Sock McGuire), Harold Goodwin (Hansen).
BW-100m.

by Felicia Feaster