Photoplay (Jul - Dec 1939)

sian who takes her art seriously. Very quietly Madame said she would patter around in bare feet, or she wouldn't patter at all. P. S. She got the part. Room for a Groom IT can happen here — in Hollywood! When Barbara Stanwyck and Robert Taylor announced their engagement, they planned to have a brand new Beverly Hills home all bought and furnished, before the wedding bells rang out. But you know how love is! Once the engagement was confirmed, they leaped into marriage on their first free week end. So what happened? So there wasn't any place for Bob to sleep! Movie stars always have separate bedrooms, you know. Barbara's room was too feminine, and there wasn't enough closet space for Bob. Young Dion Stanwyck and the servants occupy the other available bedrooms. There are no bridal suites in Bob's tiny ranch house. So all of Bob's things are still home and a temporary bedroom has been set up in Barbara's library. Garbo Through a Rear-Vision Mirror nE have been talking to one of the studio drivers at Metro, who has been chauffeuring Greta Garbo hither and yon since "Ninotchka" went into production. He says she always wears a hat so big she can hardly get it through the car door — for the purposes of concealment— and that, usually, all he can see through his rear-vision mirror is that hat, blocking the back window. They go along, and if he gets up to even a little bit over forty miles an hour, there is a tap on his shoulder. "Not so fast, please,'' says that famous, throaty voice — that is, unless traffic is pretty heavy. If it is heavy, after the tap comes a "Please drive faster," which means she may not like speed, but she likes still less the possibility that nearby motorists may look in and see who's there! Two or three times, he says, he has glanced back to see her practically lying down on the seat, with the hat pulled over her face, to hide her from prying eyes. And once, having gotten stuck in a traffic jam, he thought she had vanished entirely, only to discover her scrooched down on the floor of the tonneau, with a car robe over her. No, sir! Moviedom's Mystery Woman isn't going to lose that mystery, if she can help it! Who's a Rat! SOMEWHERE in San Fernando Valley there is a "trade rat" that should have been a critic. This happened on Bob Young's new "Sleepy Hollow Ranch," and you have Bob's word for it that it is a true story. As you may or may not know, a trade rat is a special kind of rodent. It steals anything it can cart away, but it never takes anything without bringing something back in return. One day, Bob missed the script of a new picture he had left on a bench in the garden. Several hours later he returned to the same spot. There on the bench sat a small sack of fertilizer. Bob rushed to the studio and asked to be excused from playing the part. "They Should Take Up Music" I HEY waited, breathlessly, outside the studio projection room, where Jascha Heifetz was viewing his first movie, "They Shall Have Music." "We should have given him more footage in the first reel," an assistant producer moaned. "He won't like that first scene, I know. No actor would. Why didn't we use our heads?" The moaning went on until presently Heifetz emerged. "You know I think in that first sequence," he began while an undercurrent of groans filled the air, "I think you gave me too much footage. Wouldn't it have been better to cut into the actual drama a lot sooner?" For one long minute there was a strange silence. Blank faces stared into blank faces. Suddenly Goldwyn shouted, "Go out and get me a lot more musicians. From now on we make pictures with fiddle players. Or no, wait, make every actor on this lot take up the mouth organ or something and maybe at last we get some sense into people's heads around here." Eddy-Cation MARRIED life has made a new man of ! Nelson Eddy. It's no secret that the ' singing star used to get pretty irritable at times, especially when defective sound recording would necessitate another "take." Now Nelson does as many as twelve takes — which is a lot of sing j ing. But he couldn't be pleasanter i about it. What's more, he's taken up I tap dancing for reducing purposes. Whenever he isn't needed in front of the camera, he can be found in a de i serted corner doing an Eleanor Powell. Flynn-Formation, Please! "I IF that handsome face is marred, I'm killing myself." This message, and a score of others equally as frantic, from Flynn fans everywhere, reached Warner Brothers Studio the day after Errol Flynn's automobile accident in which he and his wife, Lili Damita were both cut and bruised. On their fourth wedding anniversary, the pair ran into a wall to avoid several jaywalkers. So, with stitches over his brow and lip, the handsome Irish lad greeted his father, a Professor in a , Dublin University, and his mother and sister who had come to visit him. And by the way, Errol's lovely sister is the object of much interest in Hollywood these days, not only because she's Errol's sister, but because she isn't remotely interested in becoming a movie actress. "My small sister," as Errol calls the eighteen-year-old Miss Flynn, "is studying medicine, if you please." Ultimatum nHEN Edna Best, estranged wife of Herbert Marshall, arrived in Hollywood to make "Intermezzo," the old question arose of whether Miss Best would or would not divorce her husband. Several years ago, Miss Best left Hollywood, a brokenhearted woman, when her husband told her his heart belonged elsewhere. But time, of course, heals all, and now she's back again. "There will be no divorce." is her ultimatum. Odd that the wife of Leslie Howard, who plays opposite Miss Best in "Intermezzo," should give the same vehement denial when asked the same question. "There will be no divorce," states Mrs. Howard. So it appears Mr. Marshall and Mr. Howard remain benedicts for the present, at least. Putting It Mildly If you've ever visited a studio set, you probably will remember, among the rest of the confusion, those stentorian tones in which the director, or his assistant Ginger MogerS Hollywood's sparkling star. See her in rko's new motion picture "Bachelor Mother" It's heaJtkfup^' i • pIeasure giving.. *!B*UMIHT GUM a"d blouse Bot'h! y°" C3n See b^ ** Sv" t,han that °f natural self °?, are-»ust «%bt because £ Z'l ^ her h™ refreshino Doubl mg * a "^ P^Z^t ^T ^ °"" everywhere else. You'll^ lt ?e P °P ular >'" Hollywood ^^^^^^^^ ,r' ^et some today. SEPTEM BER, I 939 75