Screen and Radio Weekly (Feb 14, 1937)

ae Pas Pp» through the nose as they will, they have servant trouble, even as you—-and you—and you. They hire cooks who can’t cook an egg; parlor maids who flirt with the master of the house; butlers who steal the liquor and nick off fat commissions from the tradesmen; personal maids who lift expensive gadgets with one hand while curling golden locks with the other. : There is, however, another side to this picture. Many film stars and cinema families have the same servants they have had for years. They are considerate of the help, generous to them and receive a touching loyalty from them. Poe ' But are some of the glamorous ladies difficult to werk for and are some of the wives of famous film men poison? They are! If you don’t believe it; take a day off and talk to some of the servants. They will tell all with the greatest of pleasure and with a depth of emotion that would do Garbo credit. Of course, it all depends on what the film people have been used to before fame settled in on them. If, previously, they were just ordinary rank and file ‘voyagers on the sea of life, with the servant problem the last thing to worry them, the chances are they will be either. too good or not good enough to their employees. If, on the other hand, they . have been used to-servants all their | ives, they will accept them as part of the scenery and treat them with a proper respect and a proper reserve. A GOOD servant in _ the film colony is worth a king’s ransom. The day is over when Madam can keep her cook working from six in the morn ing until] 10 at night. Now, if she is lucky enough to have a good cook, she is not only appreciative, she treats cook with consideration. A chef takes —. .$150 a month ‘and :.“living” f §-—s greatest of ease in one of the big -— ‘VHlouses where there is a great deal of entertaining. Now that the film people have estab ‘lished homes far out of Los Angeles and Hollywood in Bel-Air, Beverly Hills, Santa Monica, Brentwood, Holmby Hills and the San Fernando Valley, servBr ants have become increasingly arrogant. _ They insist on transportation to wherever they want to go at least once or twice a week; they must have their own quarters, complete with bath, sitting room, radio, mzgazines and, in gome instances, a piano. They suggest they be provided with a medium-priced ear and occasionally they get it; they yrant their evenings free, Thursday and §unday afternoons off and if they can cook well, they refuse to do anything eS Ne A good servant in the home of a star or featured player must have tact, di ; ene Spa Ay _ plomacy, ingenuity and be able to an-. swer the telephone with intelligent _ discrimination. He must know the romantic angle, the business angle and the pest angle and be able to cope with _ She iin gg re eae Levee found it difficult to live up to her all of them, casei Rn A aici Ae Pa ne hy ne a, Ce ON Servant Problem with the. Hollywood’s Butlers Are Magicians, Too, and Have a Fascination for the Ladies By Grace Wilcox N osopy in Hollywood has more servant trouble than Miss Olive Howard, in the offices of M. C. Levee, actors’ representative. It is her duty to supply servants for the Levee clients and, because of her success along this line, she is often called upon to provide servants for the friends of such clients and they, in turn, have. other friends, until poor Miss Howard is quite at her wit’s end. “Most servants are very anxious to work for the stars,” she said. “They are anxious to contact the Hollywood glamour, if only from the kitchen.. Many amusing incidents occur, especially as some of those applying for jobs know absolutely nothing about the work required of them, but merely want to get into the houses of the picture people.” Miss Howard says she has had excellent luck in supplying Joan Crawford with servants. Joan had the same Swedish couple, butler and cook, for two years, but they left to pay a visit to their own country. Next Miss Howard sent along a German couple, but there was an immediate impasse. They had two Pekineses and Miss Crawford has two Dachshunds, which took an immediate dislike to the dogs of the servants, so nothing came of that interview except a threatened dog fight. However, Miss Howard sent along another German Couple the next day, and Charles and Christine are the mo- tivating power behind the throne when Joan gives one of her intimate but formal dinners. aa M R. AND MRS. WARREN WILLIAM have an excellent cook, but Miss Howard says she has one scrious failing. She bursts into tears at the slightest provocation, which isn’t conducive to a perfect dinner. Mrs. William walks on eggs the day of a dinner party, in order not to give her a case of the weeps. Mrs. Levee had a priceless colored maid who went with her when the family took a trip to Europe last year. She is a very han&some girl who looks more like a Hindu. Seeing her about the hotel suite where the Levees were staying, the Maharajah of Indore mistook her for a friend of the family, got her name and sent her an invitation to one of his parties in London. When he found out his mistake, he had to change the date of his soiree, but Carrie never got over it. She became so haughty that Mrs. and had to dismiss her when they returned home. “The Joe E. Browns had to find a new butler, because the one they had was discovered walking out in one of Joe's suits,” relates Miss Howard, “I sent one out to Mrs. Brown, but she went to a private phone and called me up. JI wouldn’t Gare hire him, she said. ‘He wears a toupee and you know what Joe and the boys would do about that! They would have the time of their lives, and I won’t have the poor fellow humiliated; besides,. I couldn’t keep a straight face. myself, just looking at this family of mine.’ ” “Before his marriage to Joan Blondell,’ said Miss Howard, “Dick Powell had a very efficient Swedish couple— cook and butler. Dick’s mother came to visit and, being domestic went into the kitchen to prepare some dish of which her son is especially fond. Imagine her surprise to be ordered out by the cook! Dick took the servant to task about it, but she remained adamant and he fired her.” ‘Tren there is the story of when the Lawrence Tibbetts were entertaining a very large party one night and Mrs. Leslie Howard had loaned her punctilious butler for the occasion. A young lady guest, who was not used to champagne, insisted on the builer dancing with her. She did not notice that his tie was the wrong color, but thought him one of the best looking men at the party; after all, he was in tails. It is not known what Mrs. Howard said later to her butler, but when she saw him doing a fancy dance number with one of the “guests, I hear she almost fainted—unti] the humor of the situation struck her. Strawberries Romanoff proved the downfall of Jeanette MacDonald’s Swiss chex. “He was one of those fellows who always say: ‘Yes, 1 know,’ about the time one is half through with the instructions,” smiled Miss MacDonald. “I told him I wanted to serve strawberries Romanoff at a dinner party and showed him how to take the ice cream just as it started to melt, mix it with strawberries and rum and pour it over pieces of cake. “When it arrived on the table, it squirted out into the faces of the guests like a Mack Sennett pie; we all laughed, however, but didn’t try to eat it. “At the next dinner, he put the dessert into the ice box and froze it so hard that we couldn’t cut it. I was sy disgusted, but determined to make him learn to do it correctly. “I went into the kitchen the next time we had guests and mace the dessert myself. while he looked on with interest.” W HEN HUMPREY BOGART rented John Halliday’s house, he took over old Sam, who had just got the job with Halliday by presenting an old photograph of the actor and insisting he had served Halliday and “Woody” Van Dyke in New York years before. Bogart soon discovered that Sam had asthma, palsy and couldn’t judge distance. When he thought he was putting a plate on the table it landed on the floor. When he hoisted a vacuum cleaner through a plate glass window, he was asked to go. The next man Humphrey hired was a Jeeves type, who gave his master a terrible case of inferiority complex. When the actor wanted to wear a certain shirt, his man suggested another as. being more appropriate, and when he wanted a fried egg, “Jeeves” insisted on a boiled one as “better for the constitution.” He went ... and the Bogarts hired a Filipino by the name of John Dellomes. He has become snobbish in proportion to the success of Bogart, who has had to give him a lesson in telephone man ners after listening to him speak to his master’s fellow actors as if they were dust beneath his chariot wheel. Arthur Treacher (Jeeves to you) has his own buttling problems in Herman Perez, who once served Herbert Hoover. Perez sets the clocks ahead so he can get to a dance on time, thus putting Treacher on the set an hour ahead of everybody else. Treacher fires Herman -on an average of once a week, to which the butler’s butler always replies: “Thank you very much, sir,” and comes to work as usual next day. Claire Trevor literally has a magician in her kitchen. His name is Marcello and after 15 years of traveling through China and the Philippines as a man of magic, he decided to serve a movie star. Heading for Hollywood, he parked himself on. Miss Trevor’s doorstep and astonished her by drawing rabbits out of hats. Marcello entertains with his magic at all her parties and is very busy publishing a correspondence course in eight different languages. teaching “personal magnetism.” However, he can and does cook delectable dishes. Greta-Garbo’s maid never talks. And there is the story (true) of the celebrated actress afflicted with that Hollywood camaraderie which leads many players to address everybody from the prop boy to the director as “Darling.” It is merely a manner of speaking and means no more than if she said “Hey, you” or called everybody “Mugg.” But this actress was giving a formal dinner party for important people. She was seriously anxious to make an impression. And everything went well until the dessert was served. The butler paused by the hostess’ chair. She looked up, smiled Brightly and said— “That’s all, darling. You may go.”