Radio mirror (Nov 1936-Apr 1937)

Record Details:

Something wrong or inaccurate about this page? Let us Know!

Thanks for helping us continually improve the quality of the Lantern search engine for all of our users! We have millions of scanned pages, so user reports are incredibly helpful for us to identify places where we can improve and update the metadata.

Please describe the issue below, and click "Submit" to send your comments to our team! If you'd prefer, you can also send us an email to mhdl@commarts.wisc.edu with your comments.




We use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) during our scanning and processing workflow to make the content of each page searchable. You can view the automatically generated text below as well as copy and paste individual pieces of text to quote in your own work.

Text recognition is never 100% accurate. Many parts of the scanned page may not be reflected in the OCR text output, including: images, page layout, certain fonts or handwriting.

RADIO M I RROR At Last! Truth About Dick Powell Quitting Hollywood Hotel type of parts which he was assigned and the publicity build up — that soon had him eating his heart out in sheer loneliness. Dick missed, among other things the invigorating, stimulating contact with a living audience. He abhorred the zany type of singing hero he was called upon to portray. He felt that all his years of study might as well have been tossed into the ash can. And to crown it all, the studio publicity department took over his private life. He was handed schedules for his leisure hours. He must go here for lunch, dinner, dancing; he must be seen with this one and that one. Before the release of each new picture, he was carefully reported engaged or about to become engaged to the current leading woman. A Goldfish was a recluse beside this fellow who wanted no part of the glamor that had been thrust upon him. He found himself with literally thousands of acquaintances — and not one friend! Here is just one incident that will show you. He wanted to go fishing; one of those sudden impulses. So he chartered a boat and sat down to get up a party. Inside of two hours he called the whole thing off. He couldn't think of even a half dozen men friends close enough to be asked. "Even when I did meet the kind of men who I felt would be congenial, they wouldn't be themselves with me. Why, once in New York on a vacation, a friend of my brother's took me to his club. Say, the men he introduced me to practically talked baby talk to me! I felt like punching them in the nose. But then I realized, (Continued from page 21) of course, that they regarded me as a sort of amiable idiot. Naturally they judged me from my pictures and what they'd read about me." Then Dick found radio. He went on the Hollywood Hotel program. The loneliest man in Hollywood had a back-log now. He was more nearly happy than at any time since he'd left Pittsburgh. He had something he could, figuratively, get his teeth into. He grabbed on to that radio work like a drowning man clutching the proverbial straw. Now he could do the things he wanted to do informally, intimately. The fifteen minutes he spent as master of ceremonies before the broadcast began was an oasis in his week. And there was the studio audience, too. It was almost like his old master of ceremony days! "You know, I believe I stayed on that program for a year after I really knew I ought to leave just for that fifteen minutes." The program was a heavy drain on Dick's time. There is no more exacting producer in radio than Bill Bacher, which is why Hollywood Hotel has such perfect timing and speedy tempo. But that means long and arduous rehearsal. Warner Brothers, although indulgent, didn't really like it much the way Dick had to walk off the set a couple of times a week at one o'clock. They even offered to raise Dick's salary to cover the loss he would sustain if he would give up radio. But they could have offered twice that — and Dick would still have kept the radio spot. It was his life-saver. Then the program began to undergo a gradual change. The guest movie stars and the movie previews crowded Dick into a corner. His importance dwindled, imperceptibly but surely. He saw it ebbing away. He was scared — but he didn't know exactly what to do about it. Dick was always a mild sort of fellow. He'd never think of fighting. And then — again — miraculously, desperation made way for overwhelming happiness. Dick proposed to and was accepted by Joan Blondell. You know, of course, about their marriage. Who doesn't? The studio exploited their New York honeymoon to the point where Joan boiled over. It wasn't a honeymoon; it was a nightmare. They were glad to return to their simple, unpretentious, suburban home. For the first time in years Dick was happy. The most natural thing in the world, when he began to regain the even keel he had lost while he foundered in discouragement, did happen. Dick began to turn a critical eye on his career. Joan was his inspiration. Between them, they clamped firm feet down on the spectacular publicity. Their lives, they contended, were their own to live as they liked — and that was that. No more circus stuff. No more arranged days, planned out honeymoons. THE day after I talked with Dick, he ind Joan left for Yosemite Park for a real wedding trip. No publicity. No fanfare. No ballyhoo. The new Dick Powell was showing his claws. He told the publicity department where to head in — and in no uncertain terms. It could only follow, in Dick's emergence as a man who knew what he wanted, that there soon ing food deposits in hidden crevices between teeth which are the source of most bad breath, dull, dingy teeth, and much tooth decay. At the same time, Colgate's soft, safe polishing agent cleans and brightens enamel — makes teeth sparkle! . COLGATE RIBBON DENTAL CREAM 65