HOLLYWOOD TO-DAY

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 1, Issue 194, 9 April 1932, Page 2

HOLLYWOOD TO-DAY

LATE MR. EDGAR WALLACE TALKS ABOUT FILM STARS WEPT AT JACKIE COOPER If you reach Los Angeles by The Chief — and The Chief is the aristocrat of trains — you come in at sun- | set, and ten minutes later you join i a processioii of cars running three | abreast at 50 miles an hour in a : more or less westerly direction. j At a point where the cars dwindle 1 to two abreast you have left Los

Angeles proper, and you are fiying down a wide boulevard, your speed slightly increased. Dazzling headlamps come toward you — hundreds of them, thousands of them whisk past but are never gone. You are in an avenue of neon lights, of filling stations, of great open markets . . . mountains of apples, oranges, vegetables . . . another filling station, another market, a drug store, more neon lights flashing overhead, glaripg at eye-level; winking green and re'd lights holding up the traffic; mile upon mile of this. The silent driver turns his head and becomes loquacious. "Holljrwood," he says. "Is that so?" sez you. On the right the d?vk, uneven crest-line of a range of liills against a velvety, star-spangled slcy, and on the slope of the hills thousands of winking white lights — street lamps, lights of houses. "Beverly Hills," says the driver graciously. Those Eyebrows Don't make the mistake of saying Hollywood when you mean Beverly Hills. Hollywood proper is five miles away. You pass through it, ! leave it behind. The main boulevard | through Beverly Hills differs in no ; respect from Hollywood; fruit i stores, filling stations, neon lights ' running dizzily to the sky, sprawI ling across the landscape, emphasj ising luxuriously the very posters on ; the hoardings. j But don't say Hollywood. You wouldn't notice them, but they are I there. There are studios at Culver r City. You wouldn't know they were

studios at all but for the high water towers which bear their description. They are hidden from view; eriormous factories; big, enclosed stages; long avenues of administrative buildings; cutting rooms; projection rooms; sound departments; triclc camera departments; publicity buildings; buildings where writers sit and write; stenographers' departments; canteens where you can buy food under cost price — you have to do that to keep people on the lot. A sprinkling of girls outside the casting directors' oifice; very lovely girls — platinum blondes, with a few brfinettes. Platinium blondes are becoming rather a bore. Loveliness requires the setting of dark hair. Too often a platinum head goes wandering into the landscape, into the sky, into the lighter kinds of sets. ' If you want to go and see the stars you must go tound and pick them out with , a pin (wrote the late Edgar Wallace in an article to the "Daily Mail"). They go to bed early, they get up at unearthly hours and drive to their loeation. / Here is a lank young man, sitting on the edge of a big chair, halacing a cup of tea on his lcnee. Yivacious, enthusiastic, looking at his beautiful young wife for approval or confirmation. This is Charles Farrell, star and companion of stars. I bumped into a tall officer in the uniform of the Air Force. He was on his way to his dressiiig room. Mr. Riehard Dix said he was very sorry: I 'said I ivas rather sorry too.

have a chat with Jackie Cooper. Jackie is phenomenal; there is nobody quite like him in the world. His age is eight. He acts with the naturalness of du Maurier. I saw him in a film recently, and it made me we'ep. He is not the first actor who has made me weep, but there was no despair in my manly tears. The advertisements say that he rips your heart-strings, which is anatomatically absurd. But he certainly gets you going, and you wish they'd put on a Mickey Mouse picture at the. end so that you could recover your equilibrium and stride out of the gorgeous auditorium of the Chinese

Theatre dry-eyed and nonchalant. Jackie goes home at nights, puts on .his slippers and his robe, and relaxes. He is the only child in the world that has ever justified precocity. His acting is just phenomenal, and nothing else, and for three years he will be greater than Chaplin as a box-office draw. Stars are Shy. Stars are shy, and naturally, for Hollywood has produced a new type of journalist that comes around the studios and1 into the clubs and restaurants, and into the drawing-rooms, where you may have tea or a mild cocktail — and most people take tea: — and extracts all that can he extracted about the lives. habits, practices, sentiments, and biologies of all the men and women who are known to screenland. "The stork is coming to the home of Johnny Groop and Jacqueline Bings," says the writer briefly. "We hear that Lois Platinum and her hushand, Willie le Nutte, are not o nspeaking terms. Lois has been seen with the devastatingly handsome Gilbert Bonzo. Is it a match? Gilbert Bonzo divoreed the hot-hearted Anna Bazinki only last month. She is now married to Wilfred Sweet, and we hear a rumour that the story is on its way." That thriee-damned Hollywood stork! The standby of all the tuttifrutti writers. The star has no rights or reticences. The fan writer peeps into every nook and cranny of his or her life.