Photoplay (Jan - Jun 1931)

Record Details:

Something wrong or inaccurate about this page? Let us Know!

Thanks for helping us continually improve the quality of the Lantern search engine for all of our users! We have millions of scanned pages, so user reports are incredibly helpful for us to identify places where we can improve and update the metadata.

Please describe the issue below, and click "Submit" to send your comments to our team! If you'd prefer, you can also send us an email to mhdl@commarts.wisc.edu with your comments.




We use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) during our scanning and processing workflow to make the content of each page searchable. You can view the automatically generated text below as well as copy and paste individual pieces of text to quote in your own work.

Text recognition is never 100% accurate. Many parts of the scanned page may not be reflected in the OCR text output, including: images, page layout, certain fonts or handwriting.

w agons to s tars — and then they put on the brakes! Hollywood's full of men and wome n w ho keep the players from kicking over the traces By Robert Fouler your marriage," she begged, "and save your reputations." Which is exactly v. liat they did. Besides sisters and managers and pro Fessiona] soothers of one kind or another, Richard 1 >ix has an out and out balancewheel in the person of Gunboat Smith, one time world's champion pug. Now Gunner's influence on Richard is insidious and deadly. That is, it works. Many \e.ir.-~ ago (and this tale didn't come out of a publicist's scrapbook) Richard saw Gunner scrap in New York. He was drawn to him. There was a gameness about him that Dix liked. Half-way out the exit Rates he was acd by Smith. "Ain't you Richard Dix?" the Gunner is reported to have said. Dix supposed he was. "Well," Gunner went on, "you look lousy in your tight sequent i \>>w that's pretty bald stuff. Coming from some other man on some other occasion, it might have been cause for battle. (At least word battle, because and after all, this was the Gunboat himself.1) But it happened to work the other way on Dix. Fact is, Richard had never been overly satisfied with the way his movie rights looked. They were too — too pretty! So he had Gunner show him howto right. And before he was through, this same Gunner showed him quite a lot about acting — and living! They became close friends Al Jolson owns the car, but Jim Donnelly drives it — and acts as guide, guardian and friend to the famous mammy singer Alice White and Grandma. It's Grandma Alexander who tends to and tones down Alice when the flapper gets too uppity and today, although separated by a continent, the two are very intimate. "Old Gunner,'' Dix told me. "is the smartest man I know." Jimmie Donnelly is famous among show people, but perhaps you have never heard of him. Jimmie is Al Jolson's driver — pardon me Al's balance-wheel. Their association is unique enough for a paragraph or two. I. ike this: Mr. Donnelly, a brute of a man. has steered Al (both in and out of his three Mercedes Benz cars) for the past twenty years. When Jolson took on his latest wife. Ruby Keeler. he introduced Jimm: her as "my friend, not my driver." More, he cautioned her never to get high-hat with Jimmie or ask anything of him that she wouldn't gladly do herself. AL has made Jimmie a rich man. Or at least Jimmie has become rich from the start Al gave him. As a matter of fact, he's done far better in financial matters than Al. His chief fight with Jolson is over the stock market and things financial. It was Jimmie. for instance, who urged Al to take Warner Brothers' stock in payment for his "Jazz Singer." Al demanded cash, however, and as a result is still moaning over his mistake. Today he treats Jimmie's advice with more (much DD respect. Then there's George Arliss and his man's man: George Jenner. Jcnner, powerful, decisive. all-British, has served as Arliss' valet for over these past twenty years. But here again, he goes beyond the limits of his job. He, too, is a balancewheel. Among other things, he is agonizingly concerned over Arliss' health. In fact. Jenner believes Mr. Arliss should never have taken up this movie busi [ please ti rx i 117]