Photoplay (Jan - Jun 1943)

Hollywood Street Scene COMING back to Hollywood after an absence has the excitement of a second date with a beautiful woman you've never been able to forget since your first meeting. In the space of a week after your plane streams out of the grayness of an early winter mist onto the landing field at Burbank, you have seen and recorded the following: Cary Grant, lounging between scenes of "From Here To Victory" and telling with a paternal twinkle of taking his young son Lance to visit the set of the new Zombie picture and of Lance's recoiling in terror at sight of the six-foot-seven sleepwalker enacting his role. John Payne and June Havoc at the Twentieth CenturyFox commissary, so handsome in their Gay Nineties make-up for "Hello, Frisco, Hello," breaking into laughter i over their newest Jack Oakie joke and the story of June's ! goat, a household pet. Bette Davis on the set of "Old Acquaintance" talking about her new Photoplay-Movie Mirror feature and wondering if the readers whose letters she is answering so frankly will charge her with being just another Dorothy Dix, or an old maid with nothing better to do — all the while the set lights showing her eyes to be incredibly blue. Paul Henreid coming into the Warner publicity office wearing a jacket and a smile that helps explain his popularity so quickly attained in "Now, Voyager." Annie Sheridan shouting a greeting to a friend half a block away and hard of hearing, judging from the volume of the hail. Conrad Veidt, more amused than embarrassed, caught in a rehearsal studio at M-G-M rehearsing a tango and admitting that he had never before attempted such a dance. Joan Crawford elated when told how nice a guy her husband Phil Terry is, and Phil entertaining on the set while Joan rehearses a difficult scene with Fred MacMurray. Virginia Weidler, between gulps of a hasty luncheon, FEBRUARY, 1943 saying hello and explaining that her newest picture, "The Youngest Profession," is based on a series of short stories by Lillian Day that appeared originally in Photoplay. THE acrid smell of gunpowder from exploded blanks drifting across the set of "Assignment In Brittany" and the engaging grin of Pierre Aumont, new Metro find, somewhat obscured by the carefully applied grime that puts him in character for this story of a Commando raid. Lana Turner, lovelier than memory, waiting patiently in Paul Hesse's studio, while Paul adjusts lights and camera in order to bring you another of his brilliant series of Photoplay covers and Steve Crane, Lana's young husband, waiting upstairs in the studio's modernistic reception room while Lana finishes the sitting. Lloyd Nolan, stripped to the waist, playing nine holes of golf and coming in two over par, somewhat more brilliant scoring than his dubbing companions. Betty Hutton, shepherded by fiance Perc Westmore at a sneak preview of "Star Spangled Rhythm," the picture into which Paramount put everything it could beg, borrow or mortgage, beginning with an assortment of stars including Hope, Crosby, Lamour, Lake, Goddard and ending with such added starters as Betty, William Bendix, Jerry Colonna, Rochester and Cecil B. De Mille. Deanna Durbin finishing her new picture which has broken nearly all records for length of time in production and remarking that husband Vaughn Paul was in Washington for his next assignment — "out of this country, he hopes: in Hollywood, I hope." Maria Montez in flowing robes looking the part of a South Seas queen as imagined by Hollywood scenarists but talking like a smart girl who has her heart set on stardom and dares you to keep it from her. "Now I work for peanuts, but soon — " Hollywood street scene, a town wrapped in silver glamour, hard-working, intent on its own peculiar problems, talking about rationing — of gas, of coffee and of leading men — talking about the Flynn case, the war, but mostly about itself. 25