Screenland (Nov 1935-Apr 1936)

for January 1936 59 Screen Town life reported by candid camera and news flashes By Weston East WHEN Sophie Tucker opened at the Trocadero recently for a limited engagement Hollywood dressed up all la dc da in top hat and tails and declared a night of hi de ho. Sophie, who has been around a bit in the last forty years and picked up assorted songs, gave of her Art and Hollywood went noisily mad. After she had sung "Life Begins at Forty" Sophie sort of suggested that we have a Life Begins at Forty Club. A few men responded but no women, which is quite natural as no woman has ever lived to be more than twenty-nine in Hollywood. There to give Sophie a big hand, and hoping to be pleasantly shocked, were Norma Shearer, Irving Thalberg, Carole Lombard, Bob Riskin, Janet Gaynor, Gene Raymond, Joan Blondell, Dick Powell, Madge Evans, Una Merkel, Tom Gallery, John Arledge, Bette Davis, Marion Davies, Ruby Keeler, Leslie Howard, Jack Benny, Joe E. Brown, Fanny Brice, Ann Pennington and Ted Lewis, and dozens of other celebrities. High-spots of the evening, besides Sophie's songs, were : Norma Shearer's hair-dress topped by a gold laurel crown which made Norma resemble a Roman Empress. . . . Joan Blondell and Dick Powell danced every dance together and Joan has never looked so lovely as she did in her newest evening gown and a sable cape, my dear, sable. . . . George Barnes was there with a brunette. . . . Janet Gaynor and Gene Raymond had a table by themselves, but that's not a romance, just friendship in its finer aspects. . . . Bob Ritchie was there without Jeanette MacDonald, which is news. Well, anyway Jeanette wasn't with Gene. . . . Mrs. Joe E. Brown's ermine tiara was nothing less than sensational. . . . Fanny Brice and Irving Berlin in a rhumba that would startle the Cubans. . . . Ruby Keeler in a simple suit amid the ermines and emeralds. T HREE dates in a row for Virginia Bruce and Cesar Romero — looks serious. Acme Hollywood's proud parents and the mites that make 'em mighty happy. Above, Ann Harding and daughter Jane Harding Bannister, snapped by the news camera. Ann and Jane are known in the film colony as great pals and companions. Left, Frank McHugh and his son Michael. Below, Walter Abel and his family at home in Hollywood. WHEN Lyle Talbot discovered recently that his home town, which happens to be Brainard, Nebraska, was still showing silent pictures he hied himself to the manager of the one local theatre totite de suite. "Say, what are you going to do when you run out of silents ?" he wanted to know. (The week Lyle was there they were running Percy Marmont and Rin-Tin-Tin.) The manager scratched his chin slowly. "Well, I hadn't been thinking of that," he said. "Of course with a town of only four hundred population and most of them Bohemian, no one can understand talking pictures anyway." "Did it ever occur to you it might be a good incentive for them to learn English?" was Lyle's argument, and the manager agreed to put in sound equipment — if Lyle supplied it. Lyle did, and donated the first talking picture besides. T"\ID you know that Fred Stone, (and \-J will you ever forget that danged shirt of his in "Alice Adams"?), was once Jim Corbett's sparring partner and second in the ring? Furthermore, Corbett predicted that Stone could have been light-weight champion of the world if he'd kept at boxing. But Stone chose dancing instead — and finally got to Hollywood, thank soodness for that.