Photoplay (Jan-Jun 1930)

As We Go to Press Last Minute NEWS from East wWest FOR the first time in the history of Hollywood something other than movies is the chief topic of conversation. The recent Wall Street rumpus stilled all other talk. One star lost three hundred thousand dollars. A director dropped three hundred and fifty thousand and a popular song writer is reported ruined. A producer's loss went over the two million mark. LIVING expenses are being cut to the bone. A sale held by a fashionable gown shop brought just three customers. Even a leading Hollywood physician reports a forty per cent decrease in his business. People with nervous breakdowns are prescribing their own treatment. "T^X-WIFE" will be an all-star production ■"and not, as rumored, a vehicle for Greta Garbo. Garbo's next, after "Anna Christie," is to be "Romance," the play made famous by Doris Keane. HOLLYWOOD will have to celebrate the holidays without King Doug and Queen Mary. The senior Fairbankses have decided to visit the Orient. They will sail from Hongkong and spend Christmas in Honolulu. THE latest bolt from the blue is the report that Nils Asther is going out on a vaudeville tour with the Duncan Sisters. Anything that can convert the aloof Nils to the life of a hoofer must be love! THE hitherto sheltered Lois Moran has gone modern. Her trip to London will be made M. M. (minus mother). COURAGE, all! Clara Bow's Medusa locks are doomed. The famous bricktop will have a shingle for her next picture, "The Humming Bird," in which she appears as a boy during several sequences. And — Clara has lost seven pounds PRODUCERS, like novelists, can't resist sequels to past successes. Paramount will make a sequel to "Dr. Fu Manchu" with the same cast of characters. AS soon as "Mammy," his newest opus, is edited, Al Jolson will make a trip to Honolulu with his wife. The next Jolson vehicle will probably be Al's stage hit, "Sinbad." ALTHOUGH Joseph Schildkraut made his greatest success on the stage in "Liliom," Paul Muni draws the coveted role in the phonoplay version. "Liliom" will follow the "Holy Devil," which has to do with Rasputin, the mad monk. TX7RITE your own headlines on this. As "" soon as Janet Gaynor returned from her honeymoon in Honolulu with Lydell Peck she hied herself to Palm Springs for a couple of weeks. And she went without Lydell. JEANETTE LOFF is being escorted places by a very handsome song writer named Walter O'Keefe GEORGE BANCROFT will be home from abroad for the Christmas holidays. Can Bond Street do without George 10 DOROTHY MACKAILL will have her first vacation in New York in three years. She admits that she wants to look up a few of the old boy friends. PAUL MUNI is another who decided to give his own regards to Broadway. He stopped in all key cities en route just to prove that his real face wasn't so bad. TROUPERS all, these Barrymores. John — the one with the profile — waited until the final scenes of "The Man from Blankley's" were completed before he allowed himself to come down with influenza. GOD'S gift to the steamship companies — that international commuter, Maurice Chevalier, will be back in New York in March to film — appropriately enough — "The Big Pond." LON CHANEY still has lockjaw. Although he announced that he would do a talkie, he has now decided to try one more silent first. If it goes over, he'll remain mum for good. If it flops, he'll have to figure out a thousand voices. Last Minute Reviews "The Bishop Murder Case"— M-G-M. — Crime with nursery rhymes. Another Van Dine mystery, with Basil Rathbone acting Philo Vance, the detective, on this trip of puzzling slaughter. "The Girl in the Show"— M-G-M. — No theme songs, no dance routines — just a charming unpretentious comedy with Bessie Love as little Eva. "The Grand Parade"— Pathe.— Oh, she loved a minstrel man and he loved a burlesque queen. And that's a movie plot. Helen Twelvetrees weeps in accepted Gish fashion, while Fred Scott sings divinely. A pleasingly pathetic little yarn. "Flesh of Eve" — Paramount. — Joseph Conrad would never recognize this as an adaption of his own "Victory." But never mind. Richard Arlen and Nancy Carroll though, throw a few side-lights on life in the South Seas. Only fair. "Devil May Care" — M-G-M. — The best Novarro picture in many moons. An altogether delightful romance with a Napoleonic background. The gracious Marion Harris helps Ramon with the warbling. And just watch for Dorothy Jordan. "The Locked Door" — United Artists. — Weak dialogue mars this melodrama and makes the actors seem unconvincing. Barbara Stanwyck makes a promising phonoplay debut— but Rod LaRocque, William Boyd and Betty Bronson are not so good. United Artists might better have left locked doors closed. HERE'S an answer to one of the most frequent "what has become of's." Dorothy Dalton may come back to the screen in "Bride Sixty-Six," which her husband, Arthur Hammerstein, famous stage impresario, will produce for United Artists. Among other productions in view for Hammerstein are revivals of "The Darling of the Gods" and "Thais." Remember Mary Garden in the silent version of the latter? SPEAKING of revivals— George O'Brien and Olive Borden are going around together again. MAE MURRAY has just completed "Peacock Alley" and there is talk that she will phonoplay another of her old successes, "Fascination." ANOTHER of life's little ironies. Ko sooner was the engagement of Gwen Lee and Charlie Kaley announced than the pair agreed to disagree. Now Gwen is going with Jack Oakie again ONE of those sollo voce whispers that can be heard from coast to coast murmurs that Helen Chandler's contract will not be renewed by Fox. THERE is, in "The Song of the Flame," a snappy chorine from the Folies Bergere — Countess Janina Smolinska, homeland Poland, and chief claim to fame so far the fact she advocates nudes for the screen. MIRIAM SEEGAR is Richard Dix's leading woman in "Seven Keys to Baldpate." And it follows as the day the night that Richard is paying very marked attention to her. WALTER BYRON'S contract with Goldwyn having expired, he is now freelancing. Which may mean a return engagement of the old Colman-Banky starring team when Vilma is through at M-G-M, where she has been farmed out. UPON the completion of a sketch with Maurice Chevalier for the Paramount Revue, Evelyn Brent began her second starring picture, luridly titled "Slightly Scarlet." PERT KELTON from the Broadway revues will make hey-hey in Paul Whiteman's legendary picture for Universal. GEORGE MELFORD is going Down to the Sea in Ships again. He takes a troupe to Labrador in the spring to film a picture dealing with the seal industry. UNIVERSAL is trying to purchase "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" for Joseph Schildkraut. You remember John Barrymore made his screen debut in that classic. AN unknown by the name of Helen Wright will be given her big chance opposite Glenn Tryon in "Paradise Ahoy." THE famous scene where the soldiers swim the river in their birthday clothes to visit some charmers on the other side will be left in the Universal version of "All Quiet on the Western Front." At least Universal will leave it in.