Picture Play Magazine (Mar-Aug 1927)

22 T h Stroller Pungent comments on life along Hollywood Boulevard. By Carroll Graham Illustrations by Lui Trugo WORLD Premiere !" "Gala Opening !" "All the Stars in Person !" Bah ! says Hollywood. There are more than ten first-run movie houses in town. All but two or three of them change their programs weekly, which means approximately three hundred and sixty-five opening nights a year. Nevertheless, the local theaters insist, on almost every occasion, that the studios stage "openings." This means no end of trouble. Kleig lights are scattered about the lobby, presumably to make it harder for patrons to get to the box office. Stars and directors are browbeaten into donning hard-boiled shirts and turning up at the theater to give passers-by something to look upon. Press agents stand about, biting their nails and swearing softly. Movie cameras grind and still cameras click as celebrities and psuedo-celebrities arrive. What is done with all these pictures is a mystery as yet unsolved. The stars — except those few who seem to derive a strange, Freudian delight from such spectacles — detest the gaudy display and the bother of coming downtown, after a hard day's work, to see a picture they've already witnessed many times in the projection room. The theater managers believe this ballyhoo helps to start the picture off to a successful engagement, although Hollywood is not so sure. The ordinary variety of movie actor is too common a sight to be much of a novelty about town any more, and the stars who are really big enough to attract crowds by their presence will not make public appearances, except on very rare occasions. The marriage of Joseph Jackson and Ethel Shannon has plunged one of Hollywood's foremost bachelors into matrimony. Joe is not well known outside Hollywood, but within the movie colony he's as prominent as Peter the Hermit. He writes scenarios, plays, publicity, magazine articles, and poems. He attends every first night, goes to every party, and makes public addresses on the slightest provocation. He is boulevardier, man about town, clubman, and social light. He came originally from Winchester, Kentucky, but has managed to live it down pretty effectively. His apartment in Hollywood has for years been the rendezvous of ministers, film stars, and secondstory men. Friends broke the lock off the back window, once, in order to gain access when he was absent. The lock was never fixed, and Joe's friends have been crawling in that window at all hours ever since. Now that he has become the husband of the pretty Irish actress, and has vacated his apartment, Hollywood rovers will feel keenly the loss of the only road house in town where there was no cover charge. Of interest to ministers should be the announcement that Fred Thomson, who was a Presbyterian clergyman before he became an actor, has signed a contract with Paramount which will bring him a reputed salary of $17,000 a week. Poorly paid wearers of the cloth no doubt will find solace in the old truth that virtue is its own reward. Despite any qualifications his former occupation may have given him, it seems unlikely that Mr. Thomson will play the title role in a screen version of Sinclair Lewis' "Elmer Gantry." There is in Hollywood a genial man of middle age who has stepped out of a Diamond Dick novel in some unaccountable fashion. His name is "Pardner" Jones, the first name coming from his invariable greeting, "Hello, pardner." He makes his living by his amazing skill with a rifle. He can shoot an apple off your head or an object out of your hand with no risk at all ; and what is more amazing, he can find people who will let him do it. Harry Carey, it is said, entertains guests at his famous ranch by providing Pardner with a pomaceous target balanced on his head. On location with "The Pony Express" troupe Pardner shot a jug from an actor's hand at long range, then picked the tiny handle off the remaining fragment. "These shots would be easy," he says, "if people would onlv hold still." Pardner is in his fifties now. He has no equal at sighting with his naked eve down the barrel of a rifle, but — he wears glasses when he reads. I've seen him do it, and if I ever should hold any targets for him, which is unlikely, something tells me the thought of that might be vaguely disturbing. Pardner" Jones makes a good living by his emulation of William Tell.