The New Movie Magazine (Dec 1929-May 1930)

LETTERS of a Property MAN Hopeless Mansion Ogonquit, Maine Tax Day, 1930. DEAR, Struggling Half of My Life: Hey, what's the grand and glorious about your letting the kid go hedge-hopping with some of the bum kewees that hang around the java-and-sinker joint. Just because I am up here with "The Star of the Universe" and cannot knock some sense in that cocoanut shell that you carry around for a bean occasionally you go haywire and try to make business for the man with the silk hat, frock coat, folding-chairs and hearses. Keep that young hopeful on the ground until he knows how to walk at least. I don't want to be no party to nothing pertaining to purple ribbons and wreaths of laurel. Sure, that kid can fly some of these days, but not with that bunch of crate-floaters that hangs around the beanery that you so ably lose money running. When a good flyer comes along the kid can go up and stay up, for all I care. But it's got to be a flyer, not a would-be wearer of wings. HOW come, anyway, you want him to be a flyer ? Just last week you was crazy to have him act in commotion pictures and was raising merry hades 'cause I wouldn't stand for it. Has he lost his voice or is he beginning to look like his mother? He can't be both an actor and a flyer — that's a sure thing. Newman Rose, the champion swimmer, tried to do that once and went back to playing with the fishes. He hasn't been in make-up since the last time he and Joe Jenkins tangled on the beach at Coronado, and that was many starlights ago. Rose had served in the Army Air Corps during the little ruckus that we had in making the world safe for Rose left the side car at an angle of 45 degrees, both laterally and horizontally, and at a speed of about double that of the motorcycle. He made a three-point landing — on his tummy. He had misjudged his speed, landing on his buttons and chin. When he stopped the waves were caressing his cheeks. O BY HERBERT STEPHEN DRAWINGS BY HERB ROTH the Republican party. During the time that we was shipping planes over to Europe to be knocked down by Richtofen, Rose was confined to quarters most of the time at Rockwell Field, just outside San Diego, the town that was made famous later by Smiling Butler squawking about the liquid refreshments served at a party. Butler felt the Marines didn't need so much hair tonic to keep them peaceful. HP HAT guy couldn't be kept out of the water, though. ■■ He had to have his swim two and three times a day. As soon as he was through ferrying some of the hoped-to-be flyers back and forth to the target range, Rose was in the old suit and into the Pacific for a feather-wetting. That baby could swim, too. He used to slide over the waves all the way to Coronado Beach every night, not forgetting Sunday, and it was a good six miles as the seagulls fly. He would spend the night there and swim back to camp in time for reveille in the morning. Yeah, he was confined to quarters, all right. At any rate the commanding officer thought so until he ran into him dancing at the hotel one night. Then he didn't swim any more without a guard standing by. Well, after the War some wise little sliding tintype manufacturer thought it would be good business to make some war pictures. Of course, we hadn't hat' enough war — only three years of it. But then that's the way with those purveyors of amusement to the intelligentsia. They hired Rose to do the flying. That wasn't so bad for him, the studio was right near the beach at Santa Monica and he could dampen the feathers as often as he liked. The leading man, though, walked out on 'em the first time that Rose took him up in the air. Well, maybe he did wait until they landed, but he was only half of what had gone up by then. Rose had a rep as a rough / riding cloud-puncher that just wasn't to be equalled by anyone , 94