Hollywood (1937)

HOLLYWOOD PRODUCTIONS Cary Grant (above) welcomes Director Edward N. Buzzell on Interlude set to wish Robert Riskin luck on his first directorial assignment. Pat West, character actor, listens in. Below, Grace Moore welcomes her husband, Valentin Parera, who looks in to see how Grant makes love Grace Moore relaxes on the sidelines with her director, Robert Riskin, ace scenarist who is broadening his scope in the screen world. Below, Pat West's bald head looms large as Cary Grant and Edward N. Buzzell (right) smile at something said by someone West has put in eclipse Grace Moore's Voice wings a melody through the sound stage. "Even the heavens applaud you!" The "skies" — somewhere in the top of a Columbia sound stage — open to deluge Miss Moore as she sings a love song to Cary Grant and the birds in a secluded wooded nook. Thus Cary praises Miss Moore after exhibiting contempt for her in the early reels of Interlude. It was a brilliant, hot afternoon as we walked through the sound stage door and into dripping woods to see Robert Riskin filming one of the more interesting scenes of his first directorial assignment — Grace Moore's new vehicle — for which he also wrote the screen play. To those who are confident that all opera stars are temperamental, let it be said that Grace Moore proved in the rain sequence that she "can take it" without complaint, and be assured that when in the rain scene you see her rise quickly from a roadster seat and quaver "o-o-h, it's wet," there was no make believe about it. Temperament is said to be the one thing with which Riskin has not had to deal in making his initial flight as a director, ably abetted by Henry Lachman. Miss Moore has been given excellent vocal material that promises to thrill her fans. Jerome Kern and Dorothy Fields have given her a grand array of modern musical numbers, while the more classical portions of the picture music came from the pens of Schubert and Puccini. Miss Moore is cast as an Australian opera star in America under a limited passport. She basks in the false attentions of a trio of sycophants. Her only honest emotion is her affection for the\ old maestro responsible for her success. His ambition to stage a magnificent song festival with her as the star is periled by the fact that her passport is to expire. She goes to Mexico to re-enter under a quota, but this promises delay beyond the time for the festival. Marriage to an American would solve the problem, and Cary Grant, who has no use for false human qualities such as he sees embodied in the diva, finally, for a consideration, offers to take part in a marriage of convenience. Grant's resolve weakens, they meet again, he severely criticizes the type of persons who worship at her shrine and then takes her into the woods where she can sing to a real audience — the birds. Here it must be admitted Riskin found the birds much more temperamental than his diva-star. Lack of word from Grant on the night of the festival nearly wrecks the performance because the opera star has come to believe that one man's love eclipses that of an army of sycophants. Every effort has been made to insure this Grace Moore vehicle of surpassing any of her previous screen offerings. Grant is a type of leading man new to Moore pictures. As a two-fisted, hard-drinking [Continued on page 43] 31