Motion Picture News (Oct-Dec 1930)

November 22,1 930 M o t i o n Picture News 49 *PS gifted A CERTAIN Broadway actress recently was given a long-term contract with a West Coast studio. But the inside story of her job is an amusing one. She was the sweetheart of an important New Yorker who wearied of his love and decided it was time to end things. He had powerful friends among the executives of a big movie company and he asked them to sign his girl friend for a picture. They did and she made a short subject which was quite good. Thereupon the studio officials forgot all about her and she was given no more assignments. Imagine the man's surprise when one morning she called him from the Grand Central Station. She said she "wanted to surprise her daddicums" by hurrying on to New York without letting him know. He was surprised all right, but not particularly pleased. What good was the trip if here she were back on his hands. So again he got in touch with his movie friends and told them they would have to do something better than that for him. They went into a consultation, with the result that the girl was sent for and told that her first effort had been so satisfactory they didn't want to make up their new schedule without getting her name on the dotted line. She signed, wondering what daddicums would say about another separation, never dreaming the truth. The executives told her that while her new picture wouldn't start for a while, she had better be in the Hollywood atmosphere immediately. And off she went with the relieved ex-admirer simulating tears. Perhaps they were genuine ones of relief. — A'. Y. Graphic. Six years ago Ernst Lubitsch directed a brilliant, stinging picture called "The Marriage Circle," one of the first movies to treat wedlock in the Continental manner, with a wink instead of a tear. Since then strange things have happened to the cast, says Photoplay Magazine. A year later Florence Vidor divorced King Vidor. Marie Prevost, who was already a divorcee, has married and divorced Kenneth Harlan. Monte Blue already had been divorced. Adolphe Menjou and his first wife were sundered in 1927. In 1924 Creighton Hale's wife sued him. And in the same year Harry Myers and his first wife were parted by the court.— Photoplay. • * * There is one extra man in Hollywood who never worries about the shortage of work in the studios. On the days he fails to receive a call, he znsits every hotel and drug store on Hollywood boulei'ard, collecting forgotten nickels from the return slot in the public phone booths. He says he makes from five to seven dollars a day. — Talking Screen Bunking Atlanta — There's one swarthy member of Atlanta's darktown division who can tell you that sleeping in a theatre is not what it is cracked up to be. He's in the hospital now and is getting plenty of rest. Last week a patrolman found the door of the 81 theatre, local colored house, unlocked. He investigated and discovered a husky negro asleep in one of the chairs. He awoke the sleeping one and immediately became the target for a couple of chairs and a torrent of verbal abuse. The patrolman fired from the hip and the negro collapsed. It is thought he will recover, but the odds are ten one his penchant for theatre napping has suffered a serious setback. MOVIE openings are much worse than those of the legitimate drama. At a picture opening arc lights try to blind you and the hired photographers with the flashlights try to make you deaf. Then, not being able to see or hear the picture, you stand a good chance of enjoying it. The first thing a movie producer does for his opening is to arrange for policemen to keep the crowds back. They see the cops and want to know what it is all about. If the picture people would pay as much attention to putting on a show inside the theatre as they do to putting on a show outside the theatre they wouldn't need a new invention to revolutionize the business every year. — Skolsky in N. V. News. I am happy my divorce is proceeding. I'll soon be free again and will consecrate my life to my art. I am ambitious to do on the stage what I already have done in the movies. For the time being, I will remain with my mother at Cape Ferrat, but will return to America as soon as I am free. —Pola Negri in N. Y. Eve. World. V\ URING the past six months I have commented on 80-odd movies in this column. As you know, they represent the best efforts of the nation's fourth industry. As you also know, there are three purifying processes in the industry set up to cleanse this celluloid of all un-American thought, chief sanctifier of all being ex-Harding manager. Will Hays. You may not have heard this, but there is a national prohibition law in some parts of the country, and President Hoover some time ago gave us all solemn admonition to obey all laws. Thus it is interesting to note in passing that of the 80-odd movies there were 72 that had drinking scenes, bars, bootleggers or in some way an inference that the Volstead act is not a 100 per cent success. Furthermore, the following movies showed either a woman or a man whose chief function in the story had to do with the sale or consumption of alcohol : "Alibi," "Applause," "The Czar of Broadway," "Gentlemen of the Press," "Good Intentions," "Madame X," "Man from Blankley's," "On the Level," "Holiday," "Shooting Straight," "Roadhouse Nights," "Young Man from Manhattan." In the aforementioned feature movies one or more characters drank considerably during the action, if indeed they were not actually portrayed as bootleggers. In the following movies there was at least one important drinking scene: "All Quiet on the Western Front," "Anna Christie," "The Bad One," "Bulldog Drummond," "The Case of Sergeant Grischa," "The Cohens and Kellys in Scotland," "The Dance of Life," "Dangerous Nan McGrew," "The Dawn Patrol," "The Devil's Disciple," "The Divorcee," "Girl of the Port," "The Girl Said No," "Hot for Paris," "Journey's End," "Juno and the Paycock," "The Lady of Scandal," "Paris Bound," "Safety in Numbers," "So This Is London," "Raffles." What puzzles me is how Mr. Hays and the boys reconcile themselves to their position. It is impossible, according to their creed, to show a movie representing the breakdown of the courts. Thus "The Last Mile" is too tough for a movie audience, although "The Big House" shows great similarity in places. (The warden is a kind man and the hero goes straight — there are your differences.) I question the fact that Harding Manager Hays would ever let the boys film "Revelry," a good belly laugh at the late lamented gentleman from Marion, Ohio. But I give up. The only answer I can find is that drinking, grafting, and bootlegging are such an accepted part of living today that even Mr. Hays sees nothing malicious in the constant movie dramatization of this integral activity of our land. For the sake of variation. I have a wistful desire to see some new movie plots. Instead of the gangsters, I should like to see some drunken coast guardsmen, a few crooked prohibition chiefs and a bribed judge or two in the next hundred movies. But it is only a vain wish. After all, such stories might give people the idea that Prohibition isn't enforced.— Lorents in Judge. A toast to Ruth Chatterton ! The accent of a significant and beloved personality sounds through every syllable of your art. On the stage, the veracity and inimitable grace of your characterizations left you practically without a rival ; on the screen, today, it leaves you without a peer. Those fortunate enough to have seen your work * * * still admire that talent in you, inherent or cultivated, which stamped those memorable impersonations with the mark of greatness. Nothing you do, indeed, fails to convey the authentic note, the brevet of perfection. The amiability of true art is yours, Ruth Chatterton, and the genius of universal communication. Therefore we toast you — Davidson in N. Y. Mirror. And a Whiskbroom Hollywood — Count that day lost when Jimmie Gleason doesn't hand out a new gag on the Pathe lot. Jimmie, who is playing a comedy sailor in "Her Man," which Tay Garnett is directing, pulled this one recently: "I hear the Wall Street bootleggers are giving bonuses." "What are they?" queried Tay Garnett. "With one drink they give you a seat on the curb," came back Gleason.