The New Movie Magazine (Dec 1929-May 1930)

With the Hollywood Belittlers unhappy, for it was their duty to investigate matters in which her name was involved, although no one could ever connect her with some of the west coast tragedies. Doherty was sincerely sorry, he said, that his duty caused her pain and he wrote a beautiful story about her. I MET her once up at T. R. Smith's place on 47th Street. Mr. Smith is the executive head for the Liveright publishing firm and at a literary party, as they are laughingly called, Mabel passed around her autograph album, asking all the celebrated writers there to write in her book. They all penned amusing lines and tributes to her and then she confessed to me that she once was the world's champion autographpest hater. She disliked to give her autograph, she said, and now look, here she was collecting the signatures of well-knowns herself. "At heart I guess" she said, "I'm a hero-worshiper, too." She told a story that night which amused the gang. It dealt with the origin of the first Dirty Irish Trick. Once upon a time, so her story unfolded, a handsome youth named Phil McCool was pursued by all the beautiful colleens in Ireland. In order to make all of them happy he decided to hold a contest. So he gathered them all and told them to race up a hill — the winner to become his bride! When the lassies raced up the hill and reached the top, they discovered McCool wooing another colleen — and that — so Mabel explained, was the first Dirty Irish Trick ! BUDDY ROGERS swept New York off its paws when he was here at the Paramount Theatre. Buddy shattered that theater's box office record, they say, and without the aid of a megaphone, either. Wherever he went, to lunch, or dinner, or to the theater, he was mobbed by armies of fans. The cops on Broadway had a difficult time of it keeping the mobs from congesting the busy streets. He certainly is the town's idol and more power to him. He is what Broadwayites would call "An all-right guy." His favorite anecdote, he will tell you, concerns the movie actress who while in Manhattan frequented one of the city's most exclusive hair-dressing emporiums. She had an appointment for a wave, but once before she failed to keep her date with the establishment, a very busy one, so it didn't go to any extremes to please her. She finally let out her temperament about the service, squawking madly all over the place. "Lissen you!" growled the woman in charge, "You may be a screen star out in Hollywood, but in here you are just another marcel!" Which recalls a similar squelch on another movie star who dashed up to the ticket window in the Pennsylvania Station, pushing aside others to get her transportation. "I'm Soandso," she cooed, thinking she'd make an impression, "and I'm in a hurry." "You'll have to get in line," was the (Continued from page 45) retort, "there are others waiting who are just as unimportant as you." SPEAKING of Buddy naturally reminds a Rogers fan of the other famous Rogers — Will — who long before he clicked in a huge way and settled in California was the victim of the intelligentsia who ridiculed him. One of the I-Brows had complained of Will's persistent use of the word "ain't." "Yeah," yeah'd Rogers, "I notice a lotta guys who ain't saying ain't ain't eatin'!" As grand a retort as ever was told. When Evelyn Brent was seeing the Broadway sights she passed along this amusing gag. An Indian was waiting for an interview in a Hollywood casting office and picked up a piece of paper that someone had dropped. The Indian went up to another "extra" and said: "What does this paper say?" The "extra" said that it apparently was someone's address, and then concluded: "Permit me to compliment you. You're the first movie actor I ever met who admitted that he couldn't read." Marc Connelly's "The Green Pastures" was recently produced in New York and it marked one of the first times The Deity was represented on a stage. The play, however, deals with Biblical events and is most diverting1. At the premiere performance we encountered a cinema celeb who urged us not to reveal her name if we used her story. She said that the scene of heaven in the show reminded her of the time a prominent movie critic here made the world's worst blunder. I would call it the height of conceit, but no matter, here's the story: Molnar's "Liliom" had been screened and there were numerous scenes showing heaven. The critic complained about several things and then w^ound up his amazing retort with: ". . . not content with blaspheming sacred earthly customs the author has the appalling ill taste to caricature heaven — a caricature, it hardly need be added, both shocking and inaccurate!" YOU might have heard about Cecil Beaton, the Britisher who takes photos of well-knowns and worthwhiles with a $5 camera and then sells the likenesses to fashionable magazines. Beaton was a dejected fellow the night we met him on 46th Street. He had just returned from Hollywood where he went, he said, expressly to meet and snapshot Greta Garbo. But the lady was her elusive self and Beaton felt wretched. "She is so charming on the screen," he almost wept, "I thought it would be grand to meet her and take her picture, but she couldn't be bothered." We comforted him by telling him a way to arrange matters. While Greta is difficult to meet, she has one friend in New York who arranges her business and sight-seeing when she is in town. His name is Robert Reud, a young chap, who serves the Frohman Company as press agent. Reud is said to be the only male in New York who knows when Greta arrives or leaves New York, what time she arises, retires, eats, buys, and so on. They have been friends a long time, because Reud has never violated her confidence. It is a fact that numerous magazines and newspapers have offered Reud goodly sums to jot dowm "inside stuff" about Garbo, but he has spurned them all, preferring her everlasting friendship. And he is one of five people in the whole world to wdiom she has presented her photo with her own autograph. Golly! JOE. E. BROWN, incidentally, tells the most amusing autograph story. It is the one about Rudyard Kipling, who is said to be bothered by autograph hunters more than Shaw or any movie star. Finally, an idea struck Kipling on how to rid himself of the pests, as he preferred calling them. He instructed his secretary to tell a writer who asked "How may I become a success?" that Mr. Kipling would furnish the desired information if he forwarded Mr. Kipling 25 cents for each word. The autograph seeker sarcastically wrote back: "All right then, send me one word." To which the poet who didn't sign his letter, replied: "Thanks." You might not have heard the sassiest of the "extra girl" yarns we enjoy swapping here and there along Broadway. An extra gal called up a Mrs. Rose, head of a casting bureau. The repartee went something like this: "Oh, Mrs. Rose, have you anything for me today?" "NO!" was the reply. "But. Mrs. Rose do you think you will have anvthing for me this week?" "NO!" "But, Mrs. Rose, you never have anything for me!" "Oh, don't bother me! ! ! !" "Very well, goodbye, Mrs. Rosenberg." THEN there's Marilyn Miller's quip. At least pretty Marilyn is credited with it. \Yhen a movie actor was asked: "Are you a movie actor?" He answered: "Yes. Between promises!" Another of her anecdotes, they would have you believe, concerns the time she visited Reuben's famous delicatessen, where the sandwiches bear the names of well-knowns of the stage and screen. She inspected the cryptic menu, which offered "Jack Oakie Special"; "Justine Johnstone Surprise"; "Winnie Lightner Delight" and so on. "Oh, I say," said Marilyn to the waiter, "Is that all you've got to eat here?" "Oh no, we have dozens of other selections." "That's funny," cracked Marilyn, "all I see here is ham." Paul Whiteman is very fond of his colored valet who has served him loyally for many years. So when the Whiteman outfit traveled to Hollywood and the darky came in and asked for (Continued on page 123) 97