Screenland (Nov 1929-Apr 1930)

for November 1929 11 best she can under the stigma given her in the days of the Florodora and 'beef trust' choruses. "It's all a relic of the past, when they talked of 'perfect thirty-six' and meant 'perfeet forty,' " declares Frances Grant, one of the hundred and ten 'big-time' chorus girls assembled from all over the world by the First National Studios. Here are Miss Grant's 'de-bunking the chorus girl fable' items in tabloid form: 1. The chorus girl of today who dances in 'big-time' is not a heavy eater. 2. She does not diet to make her thin. Her diet is that of an athlete. 3. She is not a 'perfect 36.' Her most popular number is 32. 4. She takes no exercise except her dancing, which keeps her from getting fat. 5. She never fails to average seven hours of sleep per night for the six working days of the week. 6. She practically always enjoys perfect health. 7. She drinks milk, buttermilk and orange juice, seldom coffee or tea, and often has never tasted champagne. 8. She seldom marries a millionaire. 9. She's usually well educated. 10. Her average age is eighteen. * * * Mary Pickford's first screen grandmother, Gertrude Norman, has proved that veteran screen players can be just as good in dialog pictures as in the old silent films. Miss Norman, who plays Mrs. Tobias Greene in the "The Greene Murder Case," Paramount's all-dialog mystery drama, made her debut with the Edison Company in "Laddie," one of the first motion pictures to be produced. Later she was called to Biograph where a little girl with long curls, Mary Pickford, was starting on the series of pictures that made her 'America's Sweetheart.' In many of these pioneering productions. Miss Norman was Miss Pickford's mother or grandmother. Since then she has played in hundreds of pictures. # # £ After a long separation, Robert Armstrong and Jimmie Gleason, who made such a tremendous hit in that phenomenal stage success, "Is Zat So?" are together again. These reunited friends are playing the featured roles in the Pathe all-talking attraction, "O, Yeah?" for which Gleason wrote the dialog — all of which may help to explain the following conversation overheard recently on their set: Cameraman: "Just a little hotter with the lights on the back of their necks." Head Electrician: "Okay. Hey, Pete. Hit them on the back of their necks with a coupla broads." Bob Armstrong: "Hit who on the back of the neck?" Electrician: "You and Mr. Gleason." Jimmie Gleason: "Is ZafSo? Well looka here " Bob: "Now pipe-down, Jimmie. This is my scrap." Jimmie: "Oh, yeah?" Bob: "Yeah. Let me do the talking." Jimmie: "Listen here, big boy. I'm the guy that puts 'talk' in 'talkies.' ' Bob : "Is zat so?" Jimmie: "Yes, zat's so!" Bob: "Then give me silent pictures." Jimmie: "Oh, yeah?" Bob: "Oh, yeah!" * * When Meriam C. Cooper's name was found among those on the passenger list of the first Graf Zeppelin flight, close friends of the adventuring motion picture director were not unduly surprised. Hardly anyone knew that he and his brother camera-explorer, Ernest Schoedsack, were filming a picture called "Grass" several years ago, until that epic of the Bakytari tribe of Persia had been completed. While "Grass" was still being pointed out as a film classic, Cooper and Schoedsack had slipped away to the jungles of Siam. Almost a year later they turned up with that tremendous, natural drama of a native family's battle against the jungle, "Chang." When they decided to make "The Four Feathers," without telling anyone their destination, or plans, they embarked for DarEs-Salaam, Tanganyika Territory, on the east coast of Africa, in the late spring of 1927. A trading ship took them south to Mikindani, at the mouth of the Rouvuma River. In June they trekked upstream with 200 native carriers and returned in December. They then proceeded on the Indian Ocean up the African Coast, through the Gulf of Arden, through the straits of Bab el Mandeb, and up the Red Sea to Port Sudan. From Port Sudan they traveled 700 miles southwest to the Nuba Mountains of the Soudan and finally to the Red Sea Hills, the land of Kipling's Fuzzy-Wuzzys, 'first class fighting men.' There they buried themselves for eight months and shot 60,000 feet of film, as local background for "The Four Feathers." That collegiate quartet! Two members of the University of Southern California Glee Club, left and right, are assisted by Marion Byron and Phyllis Crane.