Photoplay (Jan - Jun 1933)

IOO Photoplay Magazine for March, 1933 Speaking of MAGIC . . have you tried eiwiteen?" "I DON'T believe in witchcraft— magic spells and suck — 1 m quite 1933 — kut I konestly do tkink tkere's something mighty strange about this perlume, Oeventeen! Ihe mood it krings! . . . exciting and gay . . . and young . . . wky, tke very name says it! Seventeen! " Seventeen s fragrance is available in -Powder, Oacket, Toilet Water — as well as Seventeen rerlume. MAISON JEURELLE 247 Part Avenue, New York Ala hers of eucateea queen bee of the Paramount lot until Pola came swooping on with raven hair and Ernst Lubitsch? And Gloria had more or less to climb out of the driver's seat and hand the buggy whip to Pola? "Never," announced Gloria, "will I step foot on this lot as long as that woman remains." And in order to make good her threat she got herself a wheel chair and went Palm Beach chair-riding from dressing-room to set. Can or can't you see the elegant Miss Swanson chair-riding past the Negri dressing-room with nose elevated fortyfive degrees in the ozone? Home, James! A ND then, heaven help everybody, Gloria •**-discovered Pola loathed cats. That was enough. From that moment on, Gloria became a first class cat fancier with kittens begetting kittens until — well, really you actually had to wade knee deep in kittens on the Paramount lot. They even gave directions by the cats. Three gray cats and one Tom to the left. The)' actually — now mind, this in the twentieth century — hired a man and paid him a good salary to keep the eats off Pola's doorstep. Doorstep-chaser-off-of-cats, they listed him on the payroll, I believe. Then there's the case of Charles Laughton, English actor, and Richard Arlen. There was something about the big Englishman that rubbed Dick the wrong way somehow. There was no doubt, Arlen didn't jibe with Laughton. I" AUGHTON would rehearse his lines, pacing -Ljup and down, up and down, with Dick right behind him giving the best imitation of a huge and serious Englishman ever given. It irked Laughton no end. He kept flinging Dick the dirtiest of glances. Then Dick, in order to taunt Laughton further, decided to call him "Buster." " Buster," mind you, for a large and dignified Englishman. But imagine Arlen's surprise when Laughton thought the " Buster" idea the funniest thing he'd ever heard. "Buster," he kept saying. " Funny, eh what? " And then Dick shortened it to " Buzzy" and that did the trick. The two became inseparable companions. Wherever Dick went — Palm Springs, Arrowhead or Agua Caliente — there also went "Buzzy." Why you can believe it or not, but they took Nero, the star lion of "The Sign of the Cross" over to see Leo, mascot of M-G-M, and Leo walked over, took one sniff at the Paramount star, ups with his tail and smacked Nero a clout over the jaw that left him prostrate for an hour. And that, boys and girls, is what a feud means in Hollywood. Mary Returns to Herself CONTINUED FROM PACE 62 This is brought about, Mary made plain, largely because of the lack of good film stories. For the independent star who seeks quality, as Mary Pickford must, the matter of securing the right sort of screen material is most vital. BECAUSE it is so difficult to find a good story," she said, "I have been accused of being unable to make up my mind. This was especially so before I began 'Secrets.' The truth is, however, that the opposite is the case. Long ago I made up my mind that I would not go into production until I was sure I had a suitable vehicle. And standing pat on that determination took fortitude, for you have no idea how often I had to say to tempting authors, 'Get thy typewriters behind me.' "And as they withdrew into the folds of their manuscripts, I continued the search, high and low, until right underfoot, I discovered the very thing I sought — 'Secrets'! It had so much more body, so much more rhythm, so much more romance and beauty and quality that we realized fully we would be wasting time to look further. " As Mary talked on, Borzage paced back and forth. From the gloom beyond the lights he could hear Old Man .Budget croaking his sad refrain, "Overhead, overhead!" "Good gracious!" exclaimed Mary, "I'm holding up the company!" She sprang into the waiting car with Leslie Howard and immediately they became Mr. and Mrs. John Carlton of "Secrets," setting out valiantly across the continent for the final fadeout of the film. My thought flashed back to what Mary had said earlier in the interview: "The career of a film star can be likened to a pathway made of uneven stepping-stones. Some are round, others square, one will be high, another low, yet they all lead in the general direction of an ultimate goal. So it is with the pictures upon which a screen celebrity builds her career. The bad pictures (and all stars make them occasionally, she maintains) are the stones with round faces that make you slip when you step on them. But you don't stop there, you keep going, and your next stepping-stone is broad and flat and smooth, perhaps the finest in all the walk. " The star who steps on a slippery stone and stops, hesitates on the abyss of oblivion, Mary thinks. There have been fewer slippery stones in her pathway than in the pathway of many other stars for the reason that as an independent producer she has been able to select her plays. Other stars, with contractual obligations to fulfill, could not do this. "In other words," she stated, "I'm my own boss. If I don't like a story, I don't make it. " And this privilege wisely applied has undoubtedly added to the long continuation of her career. "Mary's most successful film, both financially and artistically," an official of the Producers' Association said, "was 'Coquette.' It won the Academy's award of merit, and made for Mary $300,000 more than any other picture she ever produced. "At the time of its release, three thousand theaters could not show it because they were not equipped for sound." SO with three thousand less theaters showing it than had ever before played a Pickford production, 'Coquette' made $300,000 more — a record which may never be equaled. In one theater alone," Old Man Budget bragged, (the United Artists in Los Angeles), "a total of 297,000 patrons saw 'Coquette,' 38,500 of them seeing it in a single week — a record which still stands. " When asked about "Secrets" Mary said, "When I finish apicture, I am always reluctant to talk about it. I can say this, however, about 'Secrets': There is not one place in it where I feel embarrassed. It is the first picture I ever made to which I have had that reaction. Not once do I want to hang my head. I have great faith in 'Secrets.' "