TALKIES

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 3, Issue 212, 13 September 1940, Page 3

TALKIES

THEY CALL FRED ASTAIRE THE "MAN NOBODY KNOWS" If Fred Astairc is the "man nobody knows" in Hollywood, there's a reason. To know someone takes time. Fred Astairc would be gla.cl to give Hollywood 1 this time, if he could. But Fred Astaire's life is his work. Every available second is crammed with this work. For Astaire, to a greater degree than any other personality in Hollywood, lives by the theory that anything worth doing at all is worth doing pci-fectly. He is ever striving for this perfection. More often than not, he achieves it. "My friends laughingly call me a 'worrier' about my work," Astairc smiled as he took one of his rare moments off from work in "Broadway Melody of 1910," in which he co-stars with Eleanor Powell. "I do worry, I'll admit it. I want everything to be the best I can offer. No one can turn out a good job without giving to that job full concentration. "Just take the dances, for exam- 1 pie," Astaire continued. "For every new picture it is my job to try and deliver something entirely new and original. Trying to top oneself at every turn is a career in itself. It takes time and rehearsal, so much time that I find very little left for anything else." It is probably for this reason that Astaire is contemplating a startling move. He isn't sure, himself, just how it will turn out, but he's willing to take a chance. "I want to do a picture without any dancing in it," he confided. "It's taking a gamble, but I'll have to do it some day. I don't want to keep on 'hoofing- the rest of my life. Of course," he continued, "the most important .thing to settle is, could I get away with it or would the public, accustomed to seeing me in dancing musicals, refuse to go to a picture in which no dancing would be offered? If I could find a story with a fast-moving plot and no danc ing, I'd be willing to try it. After all, 1 personally feel I deserve a rest from dancing. T've been doing

it my entire career." Aside from doing a picture sans dancing, however, Astaire lias another pet ambition, one about which few people know. A great lover of music, he spends many hours before the keyboard of his piano writing t:ongs. During work in "Broadway Melody of 1940,"' however, As.taire took his first flyer into lyric writing, composing the words to a song by pianist Walter Ruick, namely "There's No Time Like the Present for Love." The studio was so impressed with the composition that 'they plan to use it • for Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland in their next co-starring film. EXTRACTS FROM OUR HOLLYWOOD NEWS LETTER All four of 'the Bing Crosby children are in bed with colds, and Patricia Morison, co-starred with Ray Milland in "Untamed," is home from the hospital alter a siege with the 'flu.

Madeleine Carroll, in Paramount's "North West Mounted Police" Avas seen making the rounds of tlie town's exclusive shops to replenish the wardrobe that has given her the reputation of Hollywoood's best dressed woman . . . Jean Cagney in Paramount's "The Way of all Flesh," is spending a week at Santa Barbara with her mother . . . The post office delivered to Dorothy Lamour, in Paramount's "South of Samoa, " a letter sent from Georgia with just a sarong drawft on the envelope . . . Joel McCrea is back Vi Hollywood from Palm Springs where he acquired a .deep tan for his role in Cecil B. DeMille's Technicolour epic "North West Mounted Police."

OFFER DECLINED William Boyd recently turned down an offer of £1000 for his handsome white Arabian horse, Topper. It was made by the purchasing agent for one of the big circuses. "No money can buy Topper," explained Boyd, who plays the star role in the Hopalong Cassjdy pictures for Paramount. "He's just as important to the productions in which I appear as" any actor ir. them, and that includes me.Beskies this, his intelligence saved my life while wc were filming "Stagecoach War." So, do you thing I'd part with him for a mere £1000? Five times that amount wouldn't temot me. They might be able to fill my place, but not Topper's."