The New Movie Magazine (Jan-Sep 1935)

By REGINALD TAVI N ER IT'S all very well for Hollywood to re-christen its latest picture-thief and heart-throb as Walter King, but as Walter Woolf he's been at Hollywood's door for some time now and dear, dumb old Hollywood wouldn't let him in. When they did let him in with a part in "One More Spring'' he just naturally gobbled up the picture from nobody less than Janet Gaynor and Warner Baxter. And even Hollywood is willing to admit that anybody who can rise up and outshine that pair is something to get excited about. Now Hollywood, having belatedly discovered that he isn't a big, bad Woolf at all but a romantic young King, has elaborate plans for him. Walter King's story is just another version of that oft-told Hollywood tale; Hollywood was looking for him in Europe and found him in its own back yard. As a matter of fact, Winnie Sheehan was searching frantically all over England, Germany, France, Spain and where have you for a particular type to play the young violinist in the Gaynor-Baxter film — and so the Fox casting director found Walter Woolf playing a minor part in a quickie programmer right on Winnie's own home lot. Walter was wearing whiskers at the time — he was doing a Russian prince bit in "Lottery Lover." He scarcely looked romantic or soulful just then, but he {Please turn to page 50) STAR-TLING PEOPLE The Neiv Movie Magazine, August, 1935 A big bad Woolf who had to change his name to Walter King before he got a movie job. And a Virginia Briggs who changed hers to Virginia Bruce. By LEON SURMELIAN I HAVE never seen, on or off the screen, a lovelier vision than Virginia Bruce as Jenny Lind, the glorious Swedish Nightingale, in "The Mighty Barnum." Those magnificent close-ups showing her ethereal beauty had a double effect on me because I know that in real life Virginia is not only a real eyeful, with the finest school-girl complexion this side of heaven, but she also swells the heart with the glowing warmth of her humanity. And it is to that quality of hers that I want to pay tribute most of all. There is still hope for mankind as long as there are girls like her. I met her first at a cocktail party given in honor of Max Reinhardt when he came to Hollywood. It seemed to be an affair for the cinematic blue bloods. Under the Japanese lamps festooned across the patio of a Spanish mansion in Beverly Hills, it was not the passionate pallor of the gaunt Dietrich, nor the luscious stolidity of Anna Sten from the land of LTkrainia, or the wistful gaze of the lovely Loretta Young that intrigued me most, but the noble carriage of a cool, languorous, slinky blonde whom I recognized as Virginia Bruce. There was something in the way she held up her head, something fine and heroic, that stamped her in my mind as one of those rare souls that belong to the aristocracy of the spirit. The present interview began in her dressing-room at the M-G-M studio. She was taking her midday rest. The small room seemed to be illuminated with the quiet gleam of her eyes — eyes of sky blue — as she lay on her couch, her feet wrapped up in a blanket. For in spite of the brilliant sunshine, the day was rather chilly. She flashed two pretty rows of milk-white teeth as she smiled a gracious greeting. As usual, I started with trivialities, my modus operandi before launching on the more serious business of interviewing. "Is it true," I asked her, "that for the past twentythree days you have ordered from the studio commissary nothing but lamb chops and baked potatoes for lunch?" "Yes," she chuckled. "I can eat lamb chops and baked potatoes for 365 days a year." "So can I," I said, and a bond of affinity was established between us. We belonged to the same gastronomic tribe. Now we could talk like friends. I asked her to recount the main events of her life. "There is nothing exciting {Please turn to page 49) 31