Screenland (May-Oct 1931)

100 SCREENLAND wins her divorce from his lordship, her next name will be Mrs. Mendes. But as the Reno divorce will never be recognized in England, she will have to renounce her native land forever. Douglas McLean married again in March — Lorraine Eddy — his first having been Faith Cole. Dorothy Gish still seems to be getting along nicely with James Rennie, although there have been hints of temperament. Pauline Starke lias just won a divorce from Jack White after much acrimony. Among less wellknown members of the film colony there have been over twenty divorces. If this sort of thing goes on, it will bring the total for this year far in excess of the 37 divorces in the film colony for 1930 ! Elissa Landi is married to an English barrister named J. C. Lawrence and does not seem to have gone Hollywood yet. Two genuine widows who have not yet taken consolation to themselves are Doris Kenyon (Mrs. Milton Sills), and Mary Astor (Mrs. Kenneth Hawks). Charlie Chaplin has remained free of entangling alliances, even if they did try to get him engaged again in Europe. Georgia Hale remains his best girl friend in Hollywood. Maurice Chevalier still has his same Yvonne Vallee (Paris revue star) for wife. We haven't succeeded in marrying Betty Compson (Mrs. James Cruze) to Hugh Trevor yet, although we've done our best for them. Nancy Carroll, before the ink ii dry on her divorce decree from James Kirkland, sinks for the second time as Mrs. Bolton Mallory, having taken a magazine editor for spouse. Josephine Dunn is in the throes of divorcing Clyde Greathouse as we write. Katherine Macdonald is likewise demanding court relief from her millionaire spouse, Christian Holmes. And we all remember how Duncan Renaldo was sued for divorce the moment he returned from Africa with the "Trader Horn" company, Edwina Booth, the white goddess, being named as co-respondent. And we must not forget Tallulah Bankhead's sister, Eugenia, who has just taken her sixth husband, Edward Ennis White. Brave man ! However, three of her husbands were Morton Hoyt, whom she has a habit of marrying between times. Others were Lawson Butt and Howard Lee. Eu genia says it's because she's an incurable optimist. We hear, too, that Marceline Day has secretly become Mrs. Arthur Klein." Jack Dempsey and Estelle Taylor have reached the final parting of the ways, and the divorce trial is imminent. Louise Fazenda and Hal Wallis are in a fair way to join the Darby-and-Joans. Charlie I-arrell married Virginia Valli in the Spring, Virginia's first being Demarest Lamson. Eleanor Hunt married Rex Lease in April, and Corliss Palmer re-married Eugene Brewster. Helen Twelvetrees took on a new spouse in Frank Woody in April, having divorced her first, Clarke Twelvetrees, exactly a year before her second plunge. We haven't been able to do a thing about Garbo. From all accounts she persists in being unapproachable and chooses to remain unattached. But then little Clara Bow kept us properly interested, so that evens things up a bit. Clara, by the way, made the announcement that she would marry Rex Bell if she married anyone. We'll see! Their Favorite Ghost Stories Continued from page 63 Gwen was doing out of bed at that hour." "Wait till you hear mine!" cries Lilyan Tashman. "A friend bought a duplex in a lonely stretch of country near San Francisco, and sent an SOS to me to stay with her while her husband was away on business. No one was occupying the other half of the house and her maid went home at night, so she felt nervous at being alone. "The house was set on the edge of a ravine and was surrounded by tropical shrubbery, very dense. I didn't like the look of the place at all, and I wasn't reassured when, after the maid had left us and the fire had burned low, I noticed that Mary was listening for something. "Presently a muffled moan came from the ravine. Mary started up. " 'There it is ! Every night that moaning. I can't bear it !' "I made fun of her, but when I heard strange scuffling footsteps in the house next door, I stopped. The sounds continued — first the moaning in the ravine, then the footsteps going through the house — all night. Needless to say we sat up, me with a small revolver, until the maid came back in the morning. " 'The minister's daughter's been about !' she cried, when she saw the two disheveled wrecks that greeted her. Then she explained that the other half of the house had been occupied by a minister who believed that he must kill the thing he loved in order to prove his devotion to God. Quite insane, of course. He had crept into his daughter's room, strangled her and thrown her into the ravine. All night she moaned, but the neighbors thought it just the wind. In the dawn, he was discovered a raving maniac and she was dead." Lily Damita's favorite ghost story concerns an old French castle that lies in ruins by the Seine. "It was said to be haunted by the shades of those who had been butchered during the revolution, and only tourists would enter. By day, nothing ever happened, but by night during half a century seven tourists jumped from a high window and dashed themselves on the rocks below. "A band of practical people who went through the place one night claimed to have discovered the solution to the suicides, but Ronald Colman caught in a relaxed moment in "The Unholy Garden," by Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur. no local residents accept it. They said that in a high room there is cut into the wall a plaque of a monk's face; by some action of age and damp, the paint on the face has become phosphorescent and so in the dark it looks like a skull. Directly opposite the face is what looks like a doorway into a dimly lit room. But it isn't. It is a window that has served as doorway to heaven or hell for the seven frightened tourists. The rocks are more than a hundred feet below." "Uncomfortable things to have about the house," is Louise Fazenda's pronouncement on warnings. She had one herself. "I bought a lithograph of Lola Montez. Spanish dancer, some years ago. It fascinated me and I read everything I could get hold of about her — how she had dozens of European men at her feet, had the mad King Ludwig of Bavaria as lover, etc., before she came to western mining camps. "One day I was resting alone at home, perhaps half asleep, when I seemed to feel that there was someone else in the room. I opened my eyes. There by the bookcase was a woman with sad eyes. Somehow I recognized her as Lola Montez, although she was older than her picture and seemed wiser and most unhappy. "I screamed and she vanished. Then I shook myself and tried to believe I'd dreamt it. but three days later a relative I loved died. "Again I dreamt (if that is what happened) of Lola and again some disaster befell. Then I decided not to put up with her. gave away her picture, stopped reading of her — and have never seen her since." When Russell Gleason was a little boy. the family lived for a short time at Piedmont. California. The store room on the top floor seemed to hold a special fear for the child and he could not be induced to go near it. One day, when his mother had house guests, Russell was naughty and his mother decided to lock him up for half an hour. The only room available was the store room and here Russell was conducted, trembling. Scarcely had he heard the key turn in the lock than he went into violent hysterics and a doctor was summoned. It was some weeks later that Mrs. Gleason learned that the house had been the scene of a brutal murder and the body had lain in the storeroom for a week before it was discovered. June Collyer confesses that she used to believe in ghosts until — "We lived in a house set in a pine grove, where the trees moaned during storms, and I was always hearing something, much to my brother's disgust. One moonlit night, the pines wakened me with their moaning and I saw a beam glaring at me from the hearth — no real light, just a beam. I thought of Dickens' story of the veil man