Photoplay (Jul-Dec 1951)

BY SIDNEY SKOLSKY Calvel Sidney Skolsky I realize that it may be disillusioning to tell you this about the great Lanza, but Mario snores . . . Marilyn Monroe, whom the boys go to the movies to see, has been known to go to the movies alone . . . Movie cashiers don’t seem as pretty as they used to ... I often wonder if many movie producers would have accepted “South Pacific” if it had been presented as a scenario. I doubt it . . . Lana Turner’s broken toe was decorated with a bandage covered with cherry-colored sequins. I swear on the production code it’s true . . . Monica Lewis has the equipment to make the largest sweater appear snug . . . Only in the movies can a group of strangers get together and, at the drop of a chord, harmonize perfectly any song written . . . When a scene of Corinne Calvet’s was deleted from a picture by the Breen office, her only comment was, “Don’t they want the people to know I’m a girl?” ... I still get a thrill standing on the Sunset Strip and looking down on the lights of Hollywood . . . Much as I like Jane Russell, I wouldn’t want to be alone on a desert island with her. Farley Granger often eooks for Shelley Winters, so you know who wears the pants, as the expression has it, in that combination . . . Movie ushers never want to seat me in the section of the theatre I prefer, but always take me where they would sit . . . Howard Duff told me he wants to play in a Western. “An actor can’t go wrong in a Western,” said Duff. “You make them while you’re young and watch them on television when you’re old” ... 1 often think Martin and Lewis have more fun doing their act than even their audience has watching it, which may be their secret weapon. I still believe Jerry should tone down the mugging, though. Jean Peters was doing a sexy scene for ‘Anne of the Indies” wearing a transparent nightgown. The make-up man interrupted the scene because Jean’s nose was shiny. “If anyone notices Jean’s nose in this scene,” cracked Louis Jourdan, “the picture won’t make a nickel!” ... Marlene Dietrich goes to the movies and behaves as if she weren’t in the movies . . . Despite the article Hedy Lamarr wrote about the curse of beauty, her beauty was no handicap in acquiring another husband ... I thought you might like to know how much extras in pictures get paid. A day’s minimum salary is $15.56. A dress extra gets $22.23 a day. If the extra is given lines to speak, even if it’s only “Yes, sir,” the salary is $55 a day . . Maureen O’Hara will turn in the acting gem of the season if she convinces audiences she is a boy in a sequence in “Tale of Araby . . . Jeanne Crain is sexier since marriage and babies . . . Description of Hollywood climate by a friend who is not a member of the Chamber of Commerce: If you can see the mountains, it looks like rain. If you can’t see the mountains, it is rain . . . Alan Young, when asked, “Do you sing?” answered, “No — but I do four songs in ‘Aaron Slick from Punkin Crick.’” Greg Bautzer, the Hollywood lawyer, attracts more actresses than any movie hero . . . Doris Day has this advice for ambitious newcomers: “Take it easy and don’t try so hard. Success will come when it’s ready” . . . Charades is a game invented by Hollywood people so they can avoid knowing each other at parties . . . A starlet whose Pekinese had a misalliance with a mongrel wanted to know the name of “an unethical veterinarian” . . . My favorite character, Mike Curtiz, after being greeted by a stranger, remarked, “I know people I don’t even know” ... I have yet to see a private eye in the movies who didn’t wear a trench coat. So far as I’m concerned, there has never been a face on celluloid as interesting as Garbo’s ... If this be treason, make the most of it, but Rita Hayworth is not my idea of a princess— and I like her personally . . . Denise Darcel clicked with fewer lines than any other actress and yet, as Tom Jenk remarked, “Her role was stacked” . . . An independent producer was so poor that he couldn’t afford to buy “prop” money for one of his pictures and had to use the real thing ... I might reconsider and go on that desert island with Jane Russell after all . . . Tony Curtis has no inhibitions. If you want to know ^ anything about him, all you have to do is ask him . . . Dick Powell asked M-G-M for permission to borrow his wife, June Allyson, for a picture he intends producing. In this town a husband doesn’t have much to say about what his wife can and 12 can’t do. That’s Hollywood for you! Garbo . I INSIDE this union. For romance, intrigue and adventure, the combined real-life experience of this tempestuous twosome would outfiction fiction! During his precarious past life, Hedy’s tall, blond forty-two-year-old husband was a soothing source to several sighing Hollywood ladies. His marriage to Faith Domergue ended in 1947. Once, during an Atlantic crossing, Rita Hayworth, who was traveling first class, and Ted, who wasn’t, knew each other. Various Hollywoodians attempted to untangle the network of red tape that once prevented Ted’s entering this country. Hedy says, and it’s happened before, that this time she is retiring to devote her life to the fascinating fellow she originally met down Mexico way. Vive la romance! Tender Tootsies: Cal swears he’ll never touch another one! Emerging from the Polo Lounge in the Beverly Hills Hotel, we saw Elizabeth Taylor, just before she left for England, talking over a phone in the lobby. So help us, we also saw that she was standing there barefooted! A bit of super-sleuthing and we were convinced that lovely Liz hadn’t lost her lovely head. It seems that along with Jeanne Crain, Barbara Stanwyck and Ava Gardner, Elizabeth had been selected to present an award at the Screen Directors Guild annual banquet. Detained at the studio, the famous beauty arranged to change her clothes in a hotel room. The phone call came in just as she was dashing through the lobby and had removed her shoes from those tired, aching feet. It could have happened to anyone. Hollywood Headlines: Clark Gable has every reason to feel discouraged if it’s true that “Across the Wide Missouri” is so inferior it may never be released . . . All Hollywood sympathizes with Tony Curtis, who was called home from a personal appearance tour when the father he worships was stricken with a heart attack ... Now that Angela Lansbury and Peter Shaw have a new home, all they’re shopping for is six rooms of furniture and a baby . . . According to an inside source, the dove of peace is no longer the pet bird in the Rory Calhoun household r ennifer Jones, back from entertaining roops in Korea, attends UCLA music estival with husband David Selznicl M