TALKIES

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 2, Issue 106, 5 January 1940, Page 2

TALKIES

STAR BELIEVES LOVE IS IDEAL "TALENT SCOUT" Cupid is Hollywood's best talent scoul! Just how responsible this little fellow with the bow and arrow has been for the discovery of some of the screen's top stars is revealed in the career of Madeleine Carroll, star of the Paramount comedy, "Cafe Society." For it was a college love affair that was responsible for Lhe discovery of Miss Carroll and her change from an amateur actress to an important star! In this case Cupid worked through one of Miss Carroll's fellow-students at the University of Birmingham. Falling in love with the blonde beauty, the young man saw in her potentialities not then apparent to disinterested eyes. He threw over his own stage ambitions to become her self-appointed manager and press agent. He stormed London newspapers Avith stories and pictures ot Miss Carroll, gradual, ly converting London critics, as well as Madeleine herself, to the idea that she was a potential star. The rest is screen history. Miss Carroll who co-stars with Fred Mac Murray and Shirley Ross in "Cafe Society," won her first fame in America in "The Case Against Mrs Ames.'" Her pictures" since that time have included 'The Ceneral Died at Dawn,' 'Lloyds of London' and 'Prisoner of Zenda.' LEADING ROLE In Hollywood they are i'ond of telling the siory about the screen star who fractured his great toe "kicking his agent" in the heart. The agents, or 'ten percenters,' socalled because they receive ten per cent of the star's salary, are considered notoriously hard-hearted, and yet they are commodities which few players do without. It is the agent who makes the initial contact between actor and producer; the studio gates are practically closed against those who would 'storm' without undergoing the weeding out process of being 'agented.' Mary Carlisle is the exception that proves the rule. By sheer forcle of her personality and ability she obtained her first Hollywood contract sans agent, and she has been executing her contracts ever since —her latest being the leading role in Republic's "Fighting Thoroughbreds." VIRGINIA WEIDLER Virginia Weidler, 11 year old starlet who plays Michael Whalen's daughter in Columbia's "Outside These Walls" comes of one of Hollywood's most unusual families. She has five brothers and sisters Avho all play in pictures. Virginia, the young est, was born in Hollywood. Her father is an architect, and her mother a former opera star. Her first picture was John Barrymore's "Moby Dick." Subsequent films include 'Souls at Sea,' 'Men With Wi.ngs,' 'Out West With the Hardys' and Columbia's recent 'The Lone Wolf Spy Hunt.' NEWS PARS Madeleine Carroll has a collection of handkerchiefs numbering over three hundred. Many of them are gifts, and on her recent European vacation, following completion of Paramount's "Cafe Society," she ord ered three dozen made up by Hemes French handkerchief firm. Each kerchief is done in a different floral pattern and on the margin is written a history and interesting facts about the particular flower represented. Bob Hope's cook noticed that the guide on a sight-seeing bus passing the Hope place daily failed to stop and point the place out to his passengers. She called headquarters of the tour, told the exact location of her master's home and suggested that the guide include it on his tour. He did and now Bob has too many visitors—and a new cook. Dorothy Lamour has a Spanish dictionary on Paramount's "Man About Town" set; she is looking up sufficient words to translate a Spanish review of one of her latest Paramount pictures, "St Louis Blues."