Picturegoer (1934)

January 20. 1934 PICTUREGOER Weekly created this monstrosity and endowed it with life. Each succeeding generation has added its embroidery to the story, until to-day "The Golem " is a legendary figure. Karloff appears to be due for another exacting course with the make-up men. "The Golem" is reputed to be twelve feet high and proportionately built. The " Alice " Coiffure The latest feminine fashion to be started by the films is, I am told, the "Alice" coiffure. The girl who started the vogue is Charlotte Henry, Paramount's discovery, who plays the title role in Alice in Wonderland. For the picture she tied a simple blue ribbon over the top of her blonde hair so that it caught her long tresses off her forehead and ears — and a new mode was created. Among the Hollywood stars who have adopted it are Miriam Hopkins, Joan Crawford, Claudette Colbert, Sylvia Sidney and Dorothea Wieck. Leslie Howard's Hollywood Plans Feminine fans will be pleased to hear that Leslie Howard is back at work in Hollywood to fulfil his screen engagements with Radio and Warner and, presumably, to live down The Lady is Willing. The proposal that he should do The Scarlet Pimpernel has apparently been temporarily shelved and his first new picture is to be a Radio film version of the Maugham novel Of Human Bondage. This is to be directed by John Cromwell. It should be intriguing to see how the combination of a star whose attitude has always been mildly contemptuous to "the pictures" with an author whose dislike of Hollywood is well known will work out. On his present visit to the screen capital Howard has for the first time committed himself to a contract. He has not had the best of luck on his last trip home. His stage play was not an unqualified success. The Lady is Willing, the film which he made here, is reviewed on page 20. Short Shots Mr. Sidney R. Kent, chief of the Fox studio, has been warning American producers that in view of the quality of recent British pictures they must "wake up" — Johnny Weissmuller is to be an Indian in his next picture, Red Man, and his wife, Lupe Velez, is an Indian squaw for Laughing Boy — Mary Pickford earned £2,000 a week and a percentage for her recent vaudeville appearance in New York — Clark Gable and Carole Lombard are to be teamed again in Shoe the Wild Mare — The title of M.-G.-M. 's Transcontinental Bus has been changed to Fugitive Lovers ! — Tish, the famous Mary Roberts Rhinehart story, may be Marie Dressler's next starring vehicle — A recent survey among exhibitors by the Hollywood Reporter revealed that the five biggest feminine box-office stars in America are Marie Dressier, Norma Shearer, Janet Gaynor, Mae West and Joan Crawford, and, among the men, Clark Gable, Wallace Beery, Lionel Barrymore, Will Rogers and Fredric March — Gloria Stuart and her sculptor-husband, Blair Newell, are trying the Claudette Colbert-Norman Foster experiment of keeping up separate houses — Garbo has been heard singing "Who's afraid of the Big, Bad Wolf." Sally Blane in English Studios Sally Blane has interesting things to say in comparing film-making in Britain and America. "In England," she declares, "players do not live, eat and sleep motion pictures as they do in Hollywood. They are interested in their work, of course, but English actors and actresses rarely talk about motion pictures. Even the stage hands and electricians are prone to discuss the art very casually. "Making a picture over there is like spending a charming week-end in a kindly friend's home. There is little excitement. And such things happened to me as having a prop boy come up and say, 'I hope you're enjoying your stay in our country. Miss Blane.' "But I was so happy to get back to Hollywood, to the tempo I was accustomed to, to where youth and excitement reign. I know the English players have more repose and deeper cultural pursuits. But in Hollywood we live on the top layer of civilisation and are interested in what is happening to-day — and to-morrow." Kinema Couplets This week's prize of 10s. 6d. is awarded to J. Roberts, 24, Mallory Buildings, St. John's Street, E.C.i, for : — Way of a Sailor Always Goodbye Prizes of half a crown each are awarded to : — Miss A. F. Thompson, 444, New Chester Road, Rock Ferry, Cheshire, for : — Cure for Love I Lived With You Marion Simms, 3671, Fredonia Drive, Hollywood, California, U.S.A., for : — Broadway Through a Keyhole The Big Bluff Miss Barbara Jones, 9, Peter Street, Regent Street, London, W.i, for : — My Wife's Family Accidents Wanted M. H. Angell, 21, Causeway, Grimsbury, Banbury, Oxon., for : — The Private Life of Henry VIII Women of All Nations A Studio's Electricity Are you interested in film studio figures — the arithmetical kind, I mean? Here are a few compiled by the mathematics department at M.-G.-M. :— "Evidence that the motion picture industry is 'geared in high' and going at a pace which passes any record in its history, is indicated in a report from the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studios relating a great gain in its consumption of electrical power. "A few years ago the Culver City plant consumed 2,500,000 kilowatt-hours a year. Currently, with so many productions under way, half a million kilowatt-hours a month are being used, or six million a year. "With the average for home consumption set at 601 kilowatt-hours a year, this means that this one Hollywood studio could furnish light for 9,983 average homes, or a city of more than thirty thousand." Katharine as Joan of Arc Despite the preponderance of historical and semi-historical films in the current production schedules, the best news of the week is the announcement that Katharine Hepburn is to become Joan of Arc in the not too distant future. According to present plans the film will follow her impersonation of Queen Elizabeth in The Tudor Wench, the first picture she will undertake at the conclusion of her present New York stage season. I have always hoped that Garbo would give us the Maid of Orleans. However, Hepburn should provide a memorable characterisation. A New Woman Director It has always been one of the mysteries of movies that an entertainment whose appeal is concentrated on the feminine customer should have produced so few feminine film makers. It is interesting to learn, therefore, that Wanda Tuchock has been promoted to the direction of the new Radio picture Just Off Fifth A venue. Miss Tuchock thus becomes Hollywood's second woman director. She has been working at the studio for several years as a script writer and was elevated to the more responsible post after having completed the script for this picture. Dorothy Arzner is the only other woman director in the film capital. She has just completed Nana which introduces the long awaited GoldwynGlorified Anna Sten. Pepping Up Elissa Anew screen personality, it is announced, is to be created for Elissa Landi. She is to be given sex appeal and there will be no more of the cold, dignified roles in which she has appeared in almost all her previous Hollywood pictures. The Columbia Studio is at the moment negotiating with M.-G.-M. for the screen rights of Congai as a Landi vehicle. Congai was originally bought to star Jean Harlow ! Temperamental Comedians The latest development in the " all-star " vogue is " all-star " comedies. Paramount has a round half-dozen funsters in Six of a Kind — Alison Skipworth, W. C. Fields Mary Boland, Charles Ruggles, Gracie Allen and George Burns. Comedians are notoriously temperamental, and Six of a Kind has produced more " scenes " and headaches for those in authority than all the aristocratic predecessors that brought the giants of screen drama together, like Grand Hotel and Dinner at Eight. However, undismayed by Paramount's difficulties, the Radio studio has followed the fashion by pulling another six comedians. So You Won't Sing, Eh } They are Zasu Pitts, Edward Everett Horton, Pert Kelton, Ned Sparks, Lucien Littlefield and Billy Griffiths. MALCOLM PHILLIPS Constance Cummings and Eddie Foy, jun.t in one of the cabaret sequences from " Broadway Throueh a Keyhole"