Screenland (Nov 1935-Apr 1936)

70 SCREENLAND only they don't bear a bit of fruit. He's also been continually adding onto his home and another wing has been going up this winter. A tractor and a plow are Warren William's prize possessions. His five acres are in adjacent rolling foothills. When an industrious mood overwhelms Warren he gives his swanky tennis and swimming pool set-up a jaded glance and hies for ''the back forty." There, arrayed in regular overalls, he plows like mad. He's even invented a stone-catcher ; it's hitched onto the tractor to keep his land ultraneat. But being so meticulous hardly ranks him as a real farmer. Paul Kelly expects to be one, though. He went for a drive recently with a wily real estate agent and ended up with thirtyfive acres of barren property. Now a California-Spanish farmhouse is going up on it and Mr. and Mrs. Kelly and daughter move out to pioneer this spring. Paul fancies he'll sell fruit. The unique feature in his plans, however, is the private slaughter-house he'll erect. He says he'll raise pigs and kill and store them. Seems he's doing this for himself on account of he's never in his life had enough ham ! The only other two stars actually engaged in combining a touch of ranching with their private home-life are Charlie Ruggles and Wally Ford, who both go in for chickens. It's Charlie's dream to have ten thousand layers laying daily. Meanwhile, he gets enough eggs to take into a Hollywood market to swap for his supplies. Wally concentrates on broilers and prize samples roam his half-dozen acres. A few of the players have farms as investments, and occasionally sojourn at their manor-houses. The once so-secret Richard Dix hideaway has materialized as a big chicken ranch in the Malibu Hills. Edmund Lowe prefers grapes for his fifteen hundred acres near San Jose. Warner Oland has a fruit set-up near Ventura, an island off the coast of Mexico where he breeds Brahman steers, and a rustic nook in Connecticut. Retiring to dignified New England farms is the ultimate goal for Robert Montgomery, Joan Bennett, and Miriam Hopkins. Caretakers hold down the historic old houses which they are slowly filling with valuable antiques. As yet the soil hasn't been tackled, nor farm machinery bought. When Ramon Novarro purchased twelve thousand acres at Durango, Mexico, the story spread that he was retiring to his native town. Not so! Ramon has informed me that he merely made the buy to aid relatives who couldn't meet the mortgage. And he isn't quitting acting anyway. Irene Dunne has sixty acres up in Maine, which she wonders what to do with. And Kay Francis did possess a rural haven in Massachusetts. She lost it along with hubby Ken McKenna. I mustn't forget Alison Skipworth's chicken plot on Long Island, either. Skippy bought it decades ago and has never got around to retiring to it. Away over in jolly England Mary Ellis has a terribly well-groomed farm. The vegetables of this siren win prizes ! And she has just added a Beverly style swimming pool — to give the neighbors something really to gossip about on the party wires. That's the truth about these back-tothe-farm blurbs. Aside from these particular ranch experimenters, the rest of the movie stars are still city slickers ! Or — Is Hollywood Going Highbrow? "Harlequinade." She holds court in her Beverly Hills home just as she did in London and New York, usually sitting up in bed with a cup of tea in one hand and a Pekinese in the other, and all sorts of actors, actresses, writers, directors — even poets — engaged in noble conversation of which she is the ring-leader. An indomitable party, the Collier, her mind keen as a rapier and engaged in a variety of intellectual pursuits. Perhaps you noticed, when you saw "Peter Ibbetson," the adaptation is credited to one Constance Collier. Miss Collier has the nearest approach to a salon in the town, and if you engage in a dull conversation in her house, it is your own fault. Important writers are now attracted to Hollywood who never before took pictures seriously. They come out to work,_ and they have definite and constructive ideas for the screen. No longer are they ashamed of the idea. They do not think it is all madness and champagne any more. The place that used to be full of play is now a work-shop, and the hi-hat intellectuals have come to regard it as a medium that demands their best work. The group that held out the longest includes Marc Connelly, George Kaufman, Edna Ferber, Dorothy Parker, Alice Duer Miller, and Bob Benchley. The group that has the most fun and makes Harry Ruby's house a headquarters includes writer George Oppenheimer, Hecht and McArthur when in Hollywood, scribe Jim McGuiness, Comic Sid Silvers, Benchley, Connelly, Kaufman, Irving Berlin, Herman Manckiewitcz, D. Parker and A. Miller, (on ladies' day) ; and, when actors are allowed, Groucho and Harpo Marx. This bunch could be called the Times Square Boys in Hollywood. They are a club with no by-laws, and Harry's house is elected because he is the only bona fide bachelor among them. (A bachelor in Hollywood is a man who is paying alimony to only two wives.) The married men are all jealous of him, the widow and maidens are all trying to marry him, (or at least re-decorate his house), which makes it quite an amusing rendezvous at all times. The club meets almost every night to converse, to hear Gilbert Continued from page 33 Keeps busy! Nelson Eddy sings regularly on the radio as well as doing films and concerts. and Sullivan records, to play mad imaginative jokes on each other. Harry Ruby writes gags for the Marx brothers, Wheeler and Woolsey, and Joe E. Brown, composes popular songs, is a baseball nut and has a great collection of books on baseball. On the other hand, he has a superb collection of firsts in great English literature, and Jack London's original manuscript of "The Princess," one of London's' fugitive rareties. A gentleman of contrasts, Mr. Ruby. Ed Sedgwick, rough-and-tumble director and ex-Texas Ranger, has the largest collection of books and literature on the World War, except that in Stanford University. Ed has also the most comprehensive collection of dime novels in existence. (If you have any old "Diamond Dicks" in an attic trunk, get 'em out. They're worth dough.) Have you heard of Robert Montgomery's Max Beerbohm collection? He has the majority of original manuscripts, cartoons, and first editions of this writer-caricaturist. The high spot of Bob's European trip was his visit at the Beerbohm home in England, where he purchased the original manuscript of "Zuleika Dobson." I don't know what he paid for it, but a dealer in collectors' items once told me it would be cheap at $5,000. Edgar Allen Woolf collects cook books and has hundreds of them. Eddie Horton has a passion for them, too, and not only collects but uses them. (So does Woolf, and is one of the best cooks anywhere.) Eddie is a cordon bleu in the kitchen, can run you up a Crepe Suzette in no time at all. Cooking, in case you think it is merely an ordeal, is regarded in our Hollywood as an intellectual endeavor when approached with enthusiasm and research— as it should be. Edward G. Robinson is a patron of the arts in no merely ostentatious manner. He knows. Grant Woods' "Daughters of the Revolution," the painting by a ranking American that aroused so much controversy, hangs in the Robinsons' drawing room. Robinson has representative modern French — Matisse, Picasso, Derain. He has even Van Gogh, several of them. Priceless museum pieces by Vincent Van Gogh, who realized during his' short tragic life, exactly one hundred dollars from all his works. Now every painting of his is worth many thousands. Each visiting celebrity who paints or sculpts, heads straight for the Robinson home, where he is assured of a warm reception, even bed and board, as long as he cares to stay. The Warner Olands belong in the upper bracket of Hollywood intellectuals. Mrs. Oland was Edith Shearn of Boston, a painter of great distinction. The Olands shun cinema society, so-called, and flourish in a small select group of friends, most of whom are interested in the arts. They were the first translators of Strindberg, and produced several of his plays some years ago. Their friends include the Diego Riveras, whom they visit in Mexico, and they have an interesting collection of Rivera. Another painter in whom they are interested is Modigliani, and interest