Broadway and Hollywood "Movies" (Jan - Aug 1934)

“MOVIES” 37 The The Divorce Docket X MTjt*eCA tv ? divorced recently in Los Angeles. Doris testified, under oath, that Derrick threatened her with death if she went ahead with divorce proceedings. Max Baer OUR Hollywood scouts have it that Max Baer, heavyweight title contender and lately a lover in the movies, has found love in real life and contemplated marriage with Mrs. Edna Dunham, a blonde, plump New York divorcee. Baer announced the event, which must sting a thousand female hearts from the Atlantic to the Pacific, at a strictly private showing of Sally Rand's nude fan dance in San Francisco. “She’ll be out here soon.” cried Max. waving a telegram which he had just received in answer to $58 worth of long distance billing and cooing with Mrs. Dunham. “She is a swell girl,” said Maxie. "She thinks I’m sweet and I think she's sweet. And money won’t figure in this. She has plenty of her own. You ought to see her penthouse.” Max said he met Mrs. Dunham when he was in New York last time. “She was running around with Phil Plant, Constance Bennett’s former husband, but now everything is hotsy hotcha with us,” he added. Maxie’s hotsy hotcha new love was not at home recently in her apartment at 405 E. 54th St., which is not, by the way, the swell penthouse that Maxie told the world out in California that it ought to see. Mrs. Dunham's is a simple apartment on the seventh floor of a 17-story" building and faces First Ave. The ritzier apartments face East River. Mrs. Dunham is known in her neighborhood as a great reader. At the corner drug store circulating library, where she is registered as Mrs. C. E. Dunham, the clerk said proudly that once Mrs. Dunham read thirteen books in thirteen days. Her maid, however, selects the books. Eleanor Hunt, movie actress and former wife of Rex Lease, also of the movies, was married at Las Vegas, .Nevada, recently, to Dr. Frank Nolan, staff physician of the Columbia Studio, Hollywood. The knot was tied by a justice of the peace. Doris Hill Ricardo Cortez and Christine Lee, shapely blonde dancer from New York, expect to be married before the holidays. They have been looking for a home in Hollywood recently. Cortez met Miss Lee at the Ambassador three months ago. He became a widower three years ago on the death of Alma Rubens. Cortez has just finished "Mandalay.” opposite Kay Francis, and in "Wonder Bar” at Warner's. Miss Lee has done some minor film work. Is Mr. Powell engaged? "Engaged to Bill Powell? I should say not. That is. I should say I am not engaged to any one.” And that's Margaret Lindsay's stand on the proposition of matrimony. But she still goes out with Powell and smiles fondly while she does so. Crane, Wilbur, actor, playwright and producer. won' an uncontested divorce decree from Beatrice Blinn, actress, in Hollywood recently. Wilbur testified his wife preferred her own career to living where his profession required his presence. He agreed to pay $50 a month alimony for two years. Barbara Barondess, stage and motion picture actress, recently won an interlocutorydivorce decree front Irving Jacobs, motion picture distributor. She testified that her husband was cruel, once telling her she was a "rotten actress.” The case was unconlested. We’re wondering how Nancy Carroll's latest marriage is coming along; or isn't it? Last thing Nancy was doing was in a Broadway show, — a short run of “Undesirable Lady” at the National . . . Doris Hill, film actress, and George Derrick, actor, were The stork is rumored to he en route to the Joan Bennett-Jean Markev family, and is scheduled to arrive some time in February, 1934. Miss Bennett, whose last camera work, in “Little Women,” makes Amy a living, breathing, understandable girl, has retired from the screen until the end of her next chapter in family affairs. Miss Bennett is mother of one of the cutest, best behaved little youngsters in Hollywood, 5-year-old Diana Fox, by her first marriage to a Seattle man. It’ll be the first blessed event in his career for Markev. She gave up a promising career in the movies to become a model wife for William T. lnc£. eldest son of the late Thomas Ince. and then found herself forced to attend parties where her husband “passed out”, and the guests amused themselves by breaking crockery against his armored costume, Ada William lnce, one time "Miss Florida." charges in a separation action filed in Hollywood recently. The 19-year-old beauty asked the court "to grant her $750 a month alimony from Ince. a hospital interne. She told of having entered the movies, after winning the beauty title in 1926. and of being launched on a "most promising” career when along came Ince. So deftly did he paint the beauties of home life, Ada claims, that she was persuaded to abandon her efforts towards stardom to be his wife. But her husband, she says, soon wearied of the cricket on the hearth and the canaryin the cage, and developed a habit of nightlydrinking. She says that he became cruel to her, and abused her both mentally and physically. The height of her torment was reached at the party which Ince attended dressed in a knight’s armor. And rumor also has it that Dot Jordan, beautiful wife of Merian C. Cooper of RKORadio fame, is soon to become a mother . . . James E. Barton, Broadway comedian, appearing at a Des Moines theatre, was married to Kathryn M. Mullins, by District Judge Joseph E. Meyer of Iowa, not long ago. Barton, 43, gave his home as New York City, and reported he had previously been married. Miss Mullins. 30, said she lived at Hollis, Queens, New York City. < Continued on page 41 *