INSIDE HOLLYWOOD

Press, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22520, 30 September 1938, Page 5

INSIDE HOLLYWOOD

Secrets Revealed in "Stand-in"

Hollywood instinctively felt that it I had grown up when the world began clamouring for a peep behind the scenes of fantastic filmland. That was 10 years or so ago. The glamorous screen figures became news. But if "boy meets girl" is the universal screen play plot, "unknown girl becomes star" has in the past been the perennial formula for stories about Hollywood on the screen. Now Hollywood gives the world a shock and. clinches its maturity by "throwing off" at itself on the broadest scale ever dared —and the "stardom achieving" cliche is thrown out the window.

Heretical though it may seem, Wal- [ ter Wanger's "Stand-In," which stars Leslie Howard and Joan Blondell at the Civic Theatre, beginning to-day. makes a heroine of the proverbial movie queen's unsung and humble alter ego—the girl who actually does the sweating for the star on the set. Strutting across the screen are the glamorous star of fiction, the "big-shot" director, the genius producer, the fabulous press agent and all the rest of the characters the public expects; but it is the £8 a week stand-in who gets the spotlight she does not enjoy in i real life. And she never soars, or even climbs to stardom!

Joan Blondell plays the role of Lester Plum, stand-in, opposite Leslie Howard, who plays Atterbury Dodd, the naive banker, who takes over a £2,000,000 studio, and attempts to operate in by the science of mathematics.

Humphrey Bogart drops the villainous mask of "Petrified Forest's" Duke Mantee and "Dead End's" Baby Face Martin to play Quintain, the

producer who helps the bespectacled Dodd over the Hollywood hurdles; Alan Mowbray has his maddest role as Koslofski, the director; Maria Shelton plays the glamour star, Thelma Cheri; C. Henry Gordon is seen as the villain who is scheming to get control of the company, and Jack Carson plays Potts, the press agent.

Judy Garland has been seriously injured in a car smash. She was on her way back from the studio and is now in hospital, reported to be suffering from three broken ribs, a lung puncture, and a sprained back. She was working in "Love Finds Andy Hardy."

"Moonlight Sonata," the British film featuring Paderewski. has- been enjoying a success in Hollywood, where it has already run for four weeks.