Motion Picture Classic (Jul-Dec 1930)

From Where I Sit {Continued from page lo) His latest cinema love to beautiful I was passing Warner studio the other day when a newsboy ran past, shouting " Extra ! Attempt to assassinate Bill Hart ! " Who should appear on the second-floor balcony in front of Warner's executive offices but Arthur Caesar, waving a nickel, and followed by a horde of important studio muckamucks all pricking up their ears. "Who was that you said they assassinated?" shouted Caesar down at the newsboy. "Bill Hart!" said the lad, waving a paper. "Want one?" Arthur turned back in disgust and faced the group which had followed him out. "You can save your nickels," he said. " I thought he said Joe Schenck. They fired at the wrong man." This remark was made in the presence of half Hollywood, including studio executives and hoi polloi in the street. Next week, undoubtedly, they will put Arthur's salary up again, or else he will be transferred to United Artists on a new contract. That 's the way to succeed in Hollywood. Or, at least, one of the movie ways. Modesty Plus MODESTY is all right up to a point, but when it comes to this sort of thing I feel someone ought to protest. Harry Tierney, composer of theme-songs for Radio Pictures, has insured his sense of hearing for one hundred thousand dollars. And here is what he has to say about it: "Hearing is a vital asset to me. No composer except Beethoven was able to create music without it — and I'm no Beethoven!" Let us draw a veil while Mr. Tierney blushes. A Dubious Business THE cafe business in Hollywood must be just about the most uncertain thing in the world. For it depends wholly on the caprice of the stars; where they go, everybody wants to go. Nobody can attempt to fathom just why the stars' taste in eatingplaces changes. But it does change — and when that happens, wild lions couldn 't drag the Tashmans, Menjous and Baby Stars back to the Old Haunt. Now the Montmartre has gone on the rocks — the Montmartre which only a year ago was still world-famous as the haunt of the stars — the Montmartre outside which crowds used to gather every Wednesday to see celebrities arriving and leaving. The stars who made it and its proprietor, Brandstatter, what they were, stifled a yawn and moved on to the Roosevelt and the Brown Derby. And it has only taken a few months for the Montmartre to go bankrupt. The Latest Wrinkle THE comparatively new Brown Derby cafe did terrific business for a few months; but already there is a noticeable 80 cooling of ardor on the stars' part, and nothing but a miracle can restore the place to the popularity it had six months ago, when one had to wait a half hour for a table only to be told that "booths are only reserved for famous people." Now somebody is building a new place, a little way down Vine Street — a great open courtyard with a great big round-house happen in a hurry or not at all, it seems. Then, too, Bebe and Ben have both been engaged so often before that it had simply developed into a bad habit. Neither was ever married before, but a list of the people they have been engaged to would look like a Who's Who of the Western Hemisphere. But this time we wiseacres were wise once too often, as we are only too glad to admit in this case. And if you don't think it got Hollywood all of a twitter when they announced that a bachelor was to marry a spinster, why you 're not thinking, Louisa. No Joking: It Has Opened r The Near-Great Lover romance over, he tells his director (left): "I'm tired of making women — now for a restful vacation!" But, as you can see at right, there's never any vacation in a love-life kitchen in the middle, where they will serve customers in their cars. That, too, will have its day. The Synthetic Parisienne OUT comes the truth about Fifi D 'Orsay. She has never been in France in her life. Her name is Yvonne Luserer and she is a French-Canadian, one of thirteen children of a Montreal post-office clerk. The story of how she put herself over in Hollywood as a revue star from Paris is really one of the epics of filmdom. She can speak English like you and me, and assumes the accent for business purposes only. Yes, even I was taken in by Fifi. The name sounded phoney to me from the first, but I fell for the accent. Now, though, I can see that the latter is much too good to be true. The fact is, of course, that nobody with such a pronounced accent would be capable of Fift's fluency. I have awarded myself three bad marks and I am keeping myself in after school hours for a week, just to show myself where I get off. Love Finds a Way THIS month I am asking for three peppy huzzahs for Bebe Daniels and Ben Lyon. Recently there have been one or two surprises when engaged couples have suddenly got married — the Grant Withers-Loretta Young affair, for example. But in these cases the engagements were short. The Bebe-Ben nuptials, on the other hand, came as the culmination of a protracted betrothal. Everyone in Hollywood had decided months ago that if Bebe and Ben had ever really thought of marriage, they had long since put such an idea out of their heads: for Hollywood marriages notoriously N regard to Howard Hughes's mammoth production," Hell 's Angels," I would only pause to point out this fact. There are just so many seats in a theater, and just so many theaters in the world; and if Howard can add up the figures any way at all to show him a profit on his four-milliondollar investment, he's a much better man than I am. As a matter of fact, he's undoubtedly a much better man than I am anyhow; but we'll let that pass. Anyway, "Hell's Angels" has actually opened in Hollywood, and how! Airplanes played leapfrog over the palpitant crowds outside Grauman 's Chinese, and they sent down smoke screens just as Arthur Caesar was getting out of his car. The whole evening, in fact, was consecrated to Art with a capital A — with a mammoth A. The only thing that wasn 't mammoth was Sid Grauman 's bob, and I shall never be able to forgive Sid for having his curls shingled the way he has. Where Will His Money Go? AS this is written. Serge Eisenstein, the ^ Russian director, is in Hollywood. And what everybody I know or heard of is wondering at present is: What is Mr. Serge Eisenstein going to do with all the money he gets from the Messrs. Zukor and Lasky? He is going to get a salary of three thousand a week over a period of at least a year — a total of some hundred and fifty thousand smackers. At the end of the year he has to return to Russia, and the law there says that he may not bring the money in with him, nor may he derive any income from it in American investments. So he will either have to throw the money about wildly to spend it while he is in Hollywood, or else there will be large sums to be distributed to somebody or other when he leaves. Be that as it may, the eminent Mr. Eisenstein is going to find whpn he gets to Hollywood that he has far more friends and admirers than he ever suspected in his most far-fetched imaginings.