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The Kmericano from Milano
By
C E D R I C BELFRAGE
com
IF you have felt pelled to conclude, from your observation of the early musical talkies, that as singers Americans have very good profiles, hold your final verdict until you get an earful of Everett Marshall.
Everett is one of the four members of the Metropolitan Opera Company who have signed fat talkie contracts. The other three are Lawrence Tibbett, Grace Moore, and Mary Lewis. Their talkie contracts are a lucky break whichever way you look at it, because none of them is bound hand and foot to Hollywood. In each case, they are simply loaned to pictures for the time when they are not wanted at the Met. — about forty weeks a year, that is. Large sums had to be paid to the Met. directors to release them at all. And still larger sums are going into the pockets of the four Prides and Joys of American singing.
Radio Pictures is the company whose productions will be graced by the presence of Everett Marshall. And first the world is to see and hear him opposite the fair and luscious Bebe Daniels, in an operetta called "Dixiana."
There was, we may suppose, much weeping when Everett bade his pals at the Met. adieu. Also some gnashing of teeth. For it must have been like swallowing gall for the Italians, the Portuguese and the Greeks, who make up the large bulk of the Met. company, to see four Americanos getting Holl>'^vood's bags of gold, while they, the supreme songsters of the world by all musical traditions, were ignored. All that good money going to waste! But the Italians, the Portuguese and the Greeks were no longer young. They had
Everett Marshall
Did Not Reach The Top By Starting At The Bottom
Bachrach
trained so long to get a voice that in getting it they had lost everything else. It was Tibbett, Moore, Lewis and Marshall who won the four big prizes; all comparatively young people, and with voices to boot.
Treated Like a Native
MARSHALL, youngest of the four, is, however, the only one who wins a pat on the back, even in a small way, from the foreign element. For at least the Italians regarded him half as one of their own. Did he not make his debut in Italy; sing leading part.s in nearly every important opera house of that country; and was he not finally signed while there to come back and appear in America.'' The answer to these questions, as my tone of voice should have indicated, is yes.
Everett is one of those incredibly determined people, who pursue an idea so relentlessly that in the end tney have to win out. Ever since he was a boy, he was determined to be a singer, and no reverses were able to cool his ardor. Or so I gathered, after a delightful two hours spent over lunch with him.
He had just finished, that morning, the last scene for his first talkie, "Dixiana"; and at this more or less climactic point in his career, I asked him to wax reminiscent and tell me about himself. Everett told me — with a charm in the telling, the like of which I had never before encountered in Hollywood. Here is a man with a natural charm which batters down all instinctive prejudice that one might have, either against {Continued on page 102)
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