Silver Screen (Jun-Oct 1940)

IDME TOWN! By Ed Sullivan I'M writing this piece on a train going from Dayton, Ohio, to Pittsburgh, Pa., where early tomorrow morning, on the stage of the Stanley Theatre, I'll send a group of Hollywood "names" through a rehearsal of the vaudeville show we will present there. This will be Hollywood's third personal invasion of Pittsburgh within a few months. Louella Parsons and Jimmy Fidler both have preceded us with vaudeville units composed of movie performers, because this will go down in movie-vaudeville history as the year in which Hollywood, after insisting for too long a time that it wanted to get back on the stage, actually did just that. Every time you turned your head, it seemed that another columnist was escorting a troupe of movie performers into the five-a-day circuits. On top of that, groups of Hollywood performers banded together without columnists at the helm and engaged in their own cross-country hops. With me in this particular troupe are Universal's Helen Parrish; 20th Century-Fox's Marjorie Weaver; free-lance comedian Arthur Treacher; horror-man Bela Lugosi and the M.-G.-M.'s "Babes in Arms" duet of Douglas MacPhail and Betty Jaynes. From vaudeville, for good measure, I recruited Peg-Leg Bates, an amazing southern Negro boy who dances better on one leg than most dancing stars ever dance on both legs, and Vivian Fay, the toedancer you saw in "A Day at the Races" and "The Great Waltz." The reason I have outlined the entire company for you is to give you a complete picture of the problems that must be encountered when such a Hollywood company is organized for a six-week invasion of the vaudeville stages of the country. The signing of each one of these players presented a problem that was completely individual, and the solution of each problem resulted in a volume of red tape that is staggering in retrospect. Because Louella Parsons and Jimmy Fidler must have encountered these same difficulties, I think that an exposition of them will be of interest to you movie fans, because this is a phase of Hollywood with which you are not familiar, although it concerns you in your theatres. Here is what actually happens "when Hollywood tries to go to the rescue of vaudeville. My idea was to assemble a show that the bigger presentation houses could buy for $7,500 a week. For that sum of money, I wanted to offer the theatres performers from the movies who had definite box-office names. Yet obviously within the framework of a $7,500 weekly budget, it would be impossible to sign a Marlene Dietrich, who would want not less than $6,000 a week, or even a Lupe Velez who would want $2,500 a week. Railroad transportation from the West Coast and back would average about $500 a week on a four-week jaunt. There were other expenses that had to be provided for out of that $7,500, plus performers' salaries. Having played quite a lot of vaudeville, I wanted above all things movie performers who actually could DO SOMETHING on a stage. I didn't propose to throw them all into a series of dramatic sketches and let the devil take the hindmost. I wanted youth and charm, I wanted comedy, I wanted novelty. Bela Lugosi certainly offered novelty; Lugosi working with Arthur [Contintied on page 67] les, you'll look divinely lovely in these new white shoes by ENNA JETTICK. Fresh as a white cloud in the summer sky. And almost as cool, , with their breezy open toes and showers of perforations. Clever little models that actually seem to perform miracles for your feet — making them look smarter, slimmer and sizes smaller. You'll bless ENNA JETTICKS also, for their perfect fit — sizes 1 to 12, widths AAAA to EEE. All this and heavenly comfort too, for just $5 to $6 a pair! ENNA JETTICK SHOES, INC., Auburn, N. Y. CHRISTINE $6 LAUREL $5 Americas £J{ Smartest Walking Shoes