HOLLYWOOD OFFERINGS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 5 January 1940, Page 3

HOLLYWOOD OFFERINGS

SCHEDULE FOR 1940. Hollywood has begun to pour out its 1940 schedule of motion pictures, and despite the war nearly 200 million dollars’ worth of “epics of the screen” will be released to the world. Some of these films are completed or already in production, others are still in the casting stage, but most of them will be finished even if the budget has to be cut to meet the times of economy.

Perhaps the most important event in the coming release of “super-colos-sal epics” is the return to the screen of that inimitable and hitherto mute pantomimist, Charles Spencer Chaplin, who already has begun work on his first talkie, “The Dictators,” which threatens to make a laughing stock of. the world’s greatest “bugaboos,” Hitler and Mussolini.

Even if this picture fails to be funny, you and millions of other fans all over the world will be lured to theatres by the intriguing advertisements: “Charlie Chaplin Speaks For First Time.” Even if the little comic with his funny moustache, baggy trousers, and big feet were not enough to distinguish any one season,we are to have the famous Charles Laughton in a role that few of us can imagine him in “The Hunchback of Notre Dame.” R.K.O. is keeping his make-up a secret until the picture is released, but it is doubtfuul if it will be as grotesque as that affected by the late Lon Chaney, creator of the role on the silent screen.

And, just to add spice to the year’s production, you are to see two of our most gorgeous glamour girls, Marlene Dietrich and Mae West, in super Western films! La Dietrich is to team with Jimmy Stewart in “Destry Rides Again,” a story of the West, while the curvaceous Mae will team with that prince of clowns, W. C. Fields, and will assist him to clean-up a tough Western town. Fields is to be the sheriff. Other films will be: — “The Rains Came.” Louis Bromfleld’s story of India, which co-stars Myrna Loy and George Brent and heralds the return of Myrna Loy to “meanie” roles, which first made her famous.

“We Are Not Alone,” a Paul Muni vehicle which promises to be well up to the usual Muni standard, and which brings the great actor-to you minus his usual heavy make-up. “The Women." the screen adaptation of the famous New York stage hit of the same name, which brings together such glamour girls as Norma Shearer, Joan Crawford. Rosalind Russell, Paulette Goddard, Ina Claire, and about 30 others. This is being eagerly awaited by Hollywood, because critics know the tooth-and-nail fight that went on between the glamour girls for good scenes during production. Inside reports have it that Miss Russell won hands down.