Picturegoer (Jul-Dec 1936)

August 15. 1936 payroll and put Beverly Roberts into her part in Gaid's Country and the Woman. Struggle So Bette Davis has committed herself to that long and arduous struggle which may mean victory and may mean defeat, but even the victory is apt to be a barren one. James Cagney, for example, finds himself the poorer by more than /30,000 through his fight with Warners, the first round of which he has won. Ann Dvorak has come back to work, kissed and made friends, and all is forgiven and forgotten; but she has lost about ;^10,000 by her rebellion, which takes a lot of the gilt off the reconciliation. Of course, it sometimes works; Katharine Hepburn, Ginger Rogers, and Fred Astaire have all recently had differences with the managements, and got away with it; but there is the recent expensive case which Frances Day lost against Gaumont-British to remind us that artistes sometimes lose. i^uins on Show Three items of news from America suggest that audiences are overflowing the banks of their proper domain — the theatres. Firet, I hear that The Country Doctor, the film in which the Dionne Quintuplets appeared, has resulted in such an increase in the number of tourists who want to see the Quins, that special accommodation has been proN'ided for them. The famous ladies now have a recreation ground, with an oval grass plot, a miniature concrete paddhng-pool, and a circular concrete pit filled with sand ; there are also small pine trees dotted about. This is surrounded by a passageway for sightseers, floored with felt and cork so as not to attract the attention of the children, and provided with a fine wire mesh through which the tourists can see without being seen. Star-gazing De Luxe The second item concerns the people who would rather line up outside a kinema to watch the stars going in, than pay to see them on the screen. At every big Hollywood premiere, hundreds of fans push and shove and mill around on the sidewalk, watching the stars arrive in their luxurious cars; and until recently all the attention they got was to be pushed in the face or prodded in the tummy by a cop when they grew over-zealous. At the premiere of Anthony Adverse at the Carthay Circle Theatre, however, Warners tried an experiment. They erected banks of benches on the sidewalk, and sightseers were able to obtain a grandstand ^■iew of their fa\ ourites. May we look forward to the day when, for the smart openings at the Leicester Square Theatre, seats are built in the gardens round Shakespeare's statue ? That would be a pretty piece of irony. Invading the Studios The third section of the audience is swamping the studios. The exhibitions at San Diego, Dallas, and Fort Worth are attracting thousands of tourists, and e.xcursions are being run from these centres to Hollywood "to see the studios." All that the majority of trippers \vill ever see is the outside of the walls; but some hundreds of people are able to exert some sort of influence that will get them past the outer portals, esjjecially large parties of "friendly society" members — Elks, Buffaloes, and the like. Burning with a desire to see their favourites in the flesh, the visitors are conducted through the studio grounds, and are lucky to catch a distant glimpse of a player w-alking from a stage to the dressing-room block; the stages, dressing-rooms, and restaurant are rigidly barre<l to them. I have often thought it would be a paying proposition for production companies to run e.xcursions to the studios. Perhaps Elstree, Denham, and Sound City \vill come to it in time. Young Toughs Those of us who saw and enjoyed Dorothy Peter.wn's fine performance in The Country Doctor have been wondering when we should see her again — -especially as it Avas announced that she was not to play in the ict^uel, which would again feature the Dionne quintuplets and Jean Hersholt. Now I hear that she is to play Mickey Rooney's mother in the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer film The Devil is a Sissy. In this, Freddie Bartholomew plays an English boy who is thrown among young Americans in a New York public school. Jackie Cooper will be one of the youthful "gang" leaders, and the film looks tough to me, for the work of the juvenile court figures in it. Shirley Ross has her first leading part in this picture, and two favourite character actors, Gene Lockhart and Etienne Girardot, have prominent roles. Rowland Brown, who wTote the story, will also direct. PICTUREGOER Weekly This seems a pretty good example of casting for type, and may depict some of Freddie's reallife experiences in America. Film Folk John Ford, having broken his rule not to direct feminine stars by directing Katharine Hepburn in Mary of Scotland, will next direct Barbara Stanwyck in Tlie Plough and the Stars. * * * The .Mary of Scotland unit contains four Academy .\ward winners — Katharine Hepburn, Fredric March, John Ford, director, and Dudley Nichols, who adapted the story for the screen. * * * Radio Pictures have taken options on all the "Saint" stories by Leslie Charteris, and will shortly produce one of these. Saint in New York, in which the central character lends his talents to the police in a campaign to rid New York of gangsters. * * * L'nder Claudette Colbert's new contract with Paramount, she will appear in seven Paramount productions in the next two and a half years, starting a new picture every four months. In between these she has a right to play in three films for other companies. * * * Anne Shirley, at eighteen, has just completed the high-school course prescribed by the State of California. She has just finished playing the title-role in M'Liss for Radio. * * * In all their nineteen pictures. WTieeler and Woolsey have had only four leading ladies. Dorothy Lee appeared in sixteen of them, Mary Carlisle in one, Betty Grable in one, and now Barbara Pepper is in .'\Iumnt)''s Boys. * * * The British Film Industry has sent twelve British films to the annual Film Festival, now in progress in Venice. « « ♦ Lee Tung Foo, celebrated Chinese actor and opera-singer for 30 years, is with Gary Cooper in The General Died at Daum. ♦ ♦ ♦ .\nd in the same film there figures a "Yung Kum," which is a musical instrument, not unlike a xylophone, about 2,500 years old. ♦ * ♦ Fredric March has declared that "the Earl of Bothwell" in Mary of Scotland will be his last "costume" role — at least for some years. ♦ ♦ ♦ Cecil B. De Mille has had 100 members of his The Plainsman unit vaccinated against spotted fever epidemic in Montana. . ♦ ♦ ♦ M.-G.-M.'s new Tarzan picture is to include a strong comedy element. ♦ ♦ ♦ Jane Withers' next film for 20th Century-Fox will be Can This Be Dixie ? ♦ ♦ ♦ In the Philippines, native audiences have a habit of throwing bolo knives at the screen when they don't like the villain. Paper screens are being installed. ♦ ♦ ♦ Billie Burke has joined the cast of Columbia's Craig's Wife, with John Boles, and Rosalind Russell. Dorothy Arzner is directing. ♦ ♦ « During a fight in Columbia's The Fighter, Jimmy Durm broke a bone in his right hand. « ♦ ♦ Gertrude Michael, Sir Guy Standing, and Ray Milland play the leads in Paramounts The Return of Sophie Lang, a sequel to The Xotorious Sophie Lang. ♦ ♦ ♦ So far The Garden of Allah has cost 1,700,000 dollars (about £340,000). ♦ ♦ ♦ " His Master's \'oice" will shortly issue records taken from actual Mickey Mouse and Silly Symphony films. ♦ ♦ ♦ Harpo Marx has been invited to play the harp at the Hollywood Bowl with the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra. ♦ ♦ ♦ Edmund Gwenn and Stuart Er^vin have started work in Chain Lightning for M.-G.-M. GUY BEACON. Joan Crawford gives Robert Taylor a treat on a warm afternoon, while Tom.Carr, Carlyle Blackwell, jun., and Bryant Washburn, jun., await their turn. They are all in " The Gorgeous Hussy " together. 7