Hollywood Hotel (Warner Bros.) (1937)

Stars Forecast Success For Song From Film Dick Powell sat down before the little piano and began to play. It was in a sort of cave between crisscrossing beams and props on one of the huge sound stages at Warner Bros. studio—a cave especially dark since the scores of arc lights illuminating the vast and lavish hotel lobby set for “Hollywood Hotel” had just been turned off at the end of a “take.” Dick, who has the role of an orchestra crooner who braves Hollywood only to be plunged headfirst into romance and contract trouble, swung into the opening bars of “Fish Out of Water.” It’s one of his songs in the filmusical coming to the Strand next week. As he sang, soft-voiced Frances Langford came to stand beside him. You will hear her golden voice, too, in the production, for she plays the role of a blues singer with Benny Goodman and his famous Swing Band (they’re in the film in person). Now she hummed along as Dick sang. Other figures materialized out of the shadows—Benny Goodman himself among them, | “Boy,” predicted the Swing King, as Dick concluded, “the whole country will soon be singing that song.” A good-natured discussion followed, with this one and that claiming notice for his or her favorite in the musical—“Hollywood Bowl,” “Heart Full of Music,” and others. “Everybody on the set,” sounded a call, and the gang broke up. That’s a sample of what happens between “takes” when they’re making a big filmusical. LIKES A CEREMONY Lola Lane as the temperamental movie star Mona Marshall in Warner Bros.’ “Hollywood Hotel,’ coming to the Strand Theatre, is being dressed, shod, radio-contracted and magazine-interviewed in a mad scene. Says the interviewer: “Tell me, Miss Marshall, have you any definite views on marriage?” Replies Lola: “I like a ceremony.” Mat 101—15c SEEING DOUBLE? Well, not exactly—it’s Lola Lane (top) and Rosemary Lane (bottom), the sister-stars of ‘Hollywood Hotel,” coming to the Strand on Friday. Mat 201—30c AMERICA’S NO. 1 CROONER—Dick Powell heads the star-studded cast of “Hollywood Hotel,” the swingiest musical of the year, featuring one of the nation’s favorite radio programs, and coming to the Strand. ‘It’s Luck—Got Breaks,’ Says Star Dick Powell After years of stardom and despite annual ranking among the ten best box office bets of the year, Dick Powell still cannot believe his luck. To grasp the significance of that fact, you must understand how the average male star reacts to Hollywoodian success. For Hollywood is a heady wine. It whirls the handsome hoofer from the five-a-day routine. It lifts the soda clerk from behind the counter. It takes each one to the top of a high mountain and offers him the world. It stuffs his pockets with more money than he ever dreamed existed. It turns the spotlight on him. They buy, buy, buy—servants, lands, houses, cars, yachts, horses, every kind and condition of expensive toy. And they begin to believe the publicity, yield to the adulation of their many fans. Then they commit the biggest blunder of all. They go high hat. Now a high hat is a difficult thing to wear, especially in Hollywood where the competition is keen, where people are always climbing up and being pulled down, where yesterday’s stars are today’s extras, and nobody knows what tomorrow will bring. Which brings us around again to Dick Powell. It wouldn’t be odd if he did go high hat—certainly, not according to Hollywood standards. For he is one of the male Cinderellas of the screen. An Arkansas boy, born in the hamlet of Mountain View, he spent childhood and youth in Little Rock. Then, out of this backwater of life, he was yanked away to play and sing with a travelling orchestra and, after a time, become master of ceremonies in a Pittsburgh theatre where a Warner Bros. talent scout picked him up for the screen. The other day Dick sat in that lovely backyard of his in the mountains above Hollywood — he calls it a backyard, by the way, not a patio or a terrace—and looking around him at the comfort and loveliness his money had brought, he said: “Think of my having this! Why, there are plenty of guys in Hollywood who deserve it more than I. There are plenty of guys singing around in orchestras, too, who could get away with what I do. “Tt’s luck. It’s all in the breaks. I’m not forgetting that, let me tell you. I’ve had the breaks, some others haven’t. That’s all.” Frequently on the set where he was working in “Hollywood Hotel” (the gigantic Warner Bros. musical comedy that opens at the Strand Theatre next Friday), playing the role of an orchestra singer who comes to movietown and goes broke, Dick would say: “Funny about it, but this piece reminds me of the Summer my orchestra got fired— just a little orchestra booking out of Chi—and we all went broke in Anderson, Ind.” After each of his starring vehicles is released, studio friends hunt him up and praise his work. Invariably he replies: “Aw, I loused it up, but isn’t soandso swell? He stole the picture.” Friends say it isn’t a pose, that he means it. He’s his own severest critic, and a real guy. Hugh Herbert Needs No Lines, Uses Face Maybe it’s not the handsomest face in Hollywood—and Hugh Herbert is the first to admit that— but just the same, it’s his fortune, and he’s going to stick to it. Take dialogue away from the Warner Bros. comedy star but leave him his face, and he’ll feel equipped to play his role in any picture. In fact he never pays much attention anyhow to the lines the script writers provide for him. He’ll read them over to see what sort of character they denote, and that’s that. If he forgets the exact words, at least he remembers the sense. Or is it, the nonsense? While playing in “Hollywood Hotel,” the big musical that opens next Friday at the Strand Theatre, he was on the set one day awaiting the call before’ the camera, and telling Director Busby Berkeley about his latest adventure with the goats on his ranch. His fellow comic, Ted Healy, approached and started discussing a bit of business with Berkeley. “Hey,” said Herbert, “that’s tomorrow’s work. Don’t worry about that today.” He’s like that. And yet it does not mean that he is either untrustworthy or neglects his work. On the contrary, directors have the greatest confidence in him. Herbert says it’s because of his face. “T’ve traveled on that pan thirty years in show business,” he said. “And the longer I play, the more I realize that the face is the thing. “Why, a comedian who has made a real study of the art of pantomine doesn’t have to worry about whether he has a fat speaking part or not. All he has to do is to walk into a scene and he makes it his. COMICS FOOL EXTRAS Doubles for most of the famous movie stars impersonating the originals in the Orchid Room scene of Warner Bros. “Hollywood Hotel,” critized two of their number who joined a table group. “You look like Ted Healy and Hugh Herbert,” one of them said to the newcomers, “but a few changes here and there would improve you.” The pair walked away chuckling. Then somebody informed the doubles they actually were the noted comics. Mat 127—15c LOOK AT HUGH! says that veteran comic, Ted Healy, while Hugh Herbert goes on tooting his flute— or isn’t it a flute? Both funmakers are in “Hollywood Hotel.” 4)... Ol.