SCREEN SIDELIGHTS

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 2, Issue 330, 17 September 1932, Page 7

SCREEN SIDELIGHTS

Elissa Landi has joined the growing army of Southern Californians who have cactus gardens. It seems that there are several hundred varieties of cacti, nearly all with weird shapes and odd colourings. Miss Landi differs from many cactus gardeners in that she shuns the dozen or more professional cactus hortieulturists whose places of business dot Los Angeles, Hollywood and Beverly Hills. Every specimen in the Landi garden was found by herself in the desert. She already has nearly 40 varieties. * * * * John Boles and Warner Baxter will meet in a tennis match shortly for the right to challenge Ralph Bellamy for the Fox studio singles title. =!: * V Spencer Tracy has reached the point in the noble game of polo where they let him act as timekeeper. * :|= * * Emily Post may not approve, but nevertheless, Marian Nixon likes to prop the morning pap'er before her when she tackles the grapefruit and the bacon and eggs. ijc El Brendel is having gopher trouble. The gopher has eaten the roots of some of El's prize rose .bushes. He bought a dog to track down and eliminate the rodent, but they became friends. Then, according to Brehdel, they had a fight and the gopher chased the dog out of the neighbourhood — and he's still gone. * * Ht Alexander Kirkland is skippering the "Pegasus," a 34-foot sloop, on a voyage to San Francsico. It's the Kirkland seafaring blood. His grandfather was admiral of the Atlantic fleet. He hasn't had a chance to ride his pony in a picture as yet, but he's else, from airplanes and tramp steamers to locomotives and motor-cycles, ridden or driven almost everything and likes it. In his next film he skippers a Soiith Sea pearling schooner, and is looking forward to this experience with' anticipation. There's plenty of fun in pictures if you don't talce youl-self too seriously. -Y- * * "Do I play a cornet?" This is the question that Charles Farrell invariably asks when he is assigned to a picture at the Fox studio. . He has b'een disappointed as many times as he has put the question. Farrell is an expert cornetist, but has never enjoyed the pleasure of giving an 'exhibition of his art on his E flat instrument in a picture. He has played the piano on more than one occasion aftd in one production he strummed a ukelele. In two pictures he was required to sing, in spite of his protest that he could do much better with' a silvermounted trumpet. "I won't be happy until I get a chanca to demonstrate, in a picture, how I keep on bad terms with ray neighbohi's," declares Farrell.