NEWS OF THE FILMS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 8 March 1940, Page 9

NEWS OF THE FILMS

HOLLYWOOD GOSSIP. World champion tennis player, Alice Marble, who has been warbling in Hollywood night clubs, starts extensive singing and acting tests at M.G.M. in a. few days. She also will make some tennis action shots in which the casting director hopes to prove to studio moguls that tennis can be exciting on the screen. With Sonja Henie, ice skating star. Johnny Weissmuller, former Olympic swimmer, both big hits in pictures, there’s no reason why Alice, who is a very attractive girl, shouldn’t make a big name for. herself on the screen. Of course, if she is shown playing tennis on the screen it will end her amateur career. Hollywood makes a star—and how! Paramount publicity department sent this memo to all the staff: "Dear Staff, —The erotic wench needed for Cecil B. De Mille.'s ‘North-west Mounted Police’ is still nameless. We need a tag to describe her sensuous and deadly beauty. An artist is being commissioned to paint De Mille’s conception of her, and it is planned to launch a widespread search for this Cinderella with sex-appeal as soon as we get a suitable appelation, which must be brief and carry a wallop. The word ■savage' has been suggested and may be used if we can get another word to go with it--something to give us the feeling of a 'beautiful brute.’ Some of the judges like the thought behind 'wildcat.' ‘venus,’ 'siren,' and oven ‘vampire’ if we can give the last word violence. As you all know, the girl is a half-breed of the Canadian woods, so beautiful that all men desire her and so full of desire herself that she ruins an upstanding young mountie. Everybody please turn through some ideas.” That’s how Hollywood starts to make a newcomer.

The Ritz Brothers, notoriously hard to handle before the cameras, came out second best with Director Alan Dwan the other day. They always try to tell a director his job. They walked up to Dwan on the set a few days ago and said they didn’t like a certain scene. “We’re supposed to know what’s funny,” they said, “and we don’t think this scene is a bit funny." “All right,” Dwan replied, 'How many pages of the script don't you like?” Harry Ritz thumbed through the script and said there were four. Dwan tore them all out. They objected, but Dwan was adament, and their biggest scene was eliminated from the film. He refused to rewrite the scene.

Director Victor Fleming was directing Olivia de Havilland in retakes for "Gone With the Wind" a few days ago —a close-up of her reactions to Scarlett’s shooting of the Yankee soldier who invades the home. Fleming shot the scene several times but just wasn’t satisfied. "Well,” said Olivia, “do you remember how she reacted in the book?” "You can’t prove that by me," replied. Fleming. “I didn't read the book.” David Selznick is taking no chances with this epic, and is re-shoot-ing everything that doesn’t seem just perfect to him. He claims it will be the most perfect picture ever made —il ought to be. William Powell played , host at the

first big party he has given since Jean Harlow's death, when he invited his studio friends to house-warm his new home in Beverly Hills. Everybody expected Bill to have the place filled with trick gadgets just as he did in his other homes. But they were disappointed. Gene were all his bar gadgets. trick electrical things that caused so much fun in other homes of his, and his library of the "worst books in the world.” Bill has furnished his new home tastefully and conservatively, end styled it mainly for comfort. One of his most prized gifts, six caricatures of himself from “The Thin Man” pictures, came from Myrna Loy. George Brent has been signed to costar with Merle Oberon in Warner’s “We Shall Meet Again." This assignment will just about complete Brent's cycle of being the leading man for most of Hollywood's glamour girls from Garbo to Bette Davis. This is his first appearance with Miss Oberon, who cancelled her contract with Sam Goldwyn, and has signed with War- ; ners’.

John Garfield is the latest to stage a strike on his studio. Refusing to play opposite Ann Sheridan in a role “toe similar to everything I’ve done in Hollywood." Garfield was suspended by Warners and taken off the pay-roll. If you've taken any interest in this player's career you'll have noticed he Saville's visit to Washington may answer the questions that all Hollywood producers have been interested in knowing—whether it'is permissible for neutral America to film an Li-Nazi stor-

has been cast always as a cynical type with a grudge against the world. He does this kind of part exceedingly well, but he's scared of being typed, which is suicide for an actor. If I’m not given a reasonable chance to do something different." Garfield warned Warners. "I'm leaving town and returning to the stage.” Warners just lost one strike to Bette Davis, and may not want to back down on this one. Janet Gaynor, who has been off the screen for a long time, is about io renew her career, and is considering the script of "Every Day Is Sunday." a highly dramatic mother-lovc-and-sacri-fice yarn. She hasn't made a picture since "Three Loves Has Nancy."

Hollywood is a funny place. You | never know when you’re going to got your chance in movies. Ruth Hart, for instance, was a stock actress at M.G.M., but couldn’t get started. She went to a business school and took a secretarial course. A lew weeks ago she got a job at M.G.M. as secretary to director Sylvan Simon. She had given up all idea of becoming an actress. The other day. as she was coming from lunch, director Woody Van Dyke noticed her and asked what she (lid. Miss Hart told him. "You ought to be in pictures," Van Dyke said, and ordered a screen test for her at once. Now Miss Hart looks set for a career as an actress. Unless the British Government decides that Robert Donat is needed at home, he will come to Hollywood shortly to star in “I Had a Comrade." the anti-Nazi story he was to have made in London. Victor Saville. British producer, took a trip to Washington to confer with the British Ambassador on the advisability of bringing "I Had

a Comrade” to the screen. He was told to let his conscience be his guide, ies. Now that the United States Senate has voted to repeal the arms embargo. Hollywood is taking it for granted that it can take more liberty with its anti-German films. Hollywood cafes and cocktail bars are featuring a new motion picture machine. to rival electric phonographs. Place five cents in the slot and you can .see a motion picture short. One of the real acting plums of the year falls into the lap of young and pretty Maureen O’Hara. Charles Laughton’s Irish protege, who appeared with the tubby Britisher in "Jamaica Inn.” and will bo seen again with him as Esmeralda in his “Hune!’.back of Notre Dame." Miss O'Hara gets the Katherine Hepburn role in a remake of "Bill of Divorcement." Adolphe Menjou will play the role made famous by John Barrymore in the first “Bill of Divorcement," and Fay Bainter gets the part of the mother.

John Carradine, ever the actor on and oil the screen, drew up to the famous Brown Derby restaurant the other day at lunch-time in his chauf-feur-driven Duesenberg car. lie stepped out swathed in a long scarlet-linen opera cloak. When he threw back the cape he disclosed faded, tattered overalls he was wearing for his role :n “Grapes of Wrath." The funnies! cartoon of the week appears in the current issue of the “Saturday Evening Post." It shows a white man approaching a native in the African jungle, and the native says: "Spencer Tracy, 1 presume."