Screenland (Nov 1935-Apr 1936)

for February 1936 71 ing examples of his work hang on the walls of their enchanting beach house in Carpinteria. Warner paints the loveliest little sun-lighted landscapes, like poems. Both of the Olands are brilliant scholarly persons with a fine appreciation for the art of living. At intervals, they jaunt over Europe, leaving two big cars in the garage, taking a Ford. They entertain rarely, preferring to invite a few friends at a time to their truly epicurean dinners, which are an experience one remembers always. I think for genuine sophisticates, in the true sense of the word, the Olands belong at the head of the class. Jean Harlow wrote a book. She put it away for two months to cool, went back and read it then, was her own critic, and decided it was terrible. She is rewriting parts entirely, but some day you may see it. It is a trifle difficult to think of the Marx Brothers as high-brows, but I am afraid it has come to that. They study international politics and relations, until they speak with authority. Chico is a piano student, Harpo is good enough on the harp to have been invited by the great conductor, Otto Klemperer, to play a solo part in a sympho'ny concert. All of them collect first printings of new books by contemporary authors ; and when they buy a book, it has to be a mint edition in the dust jacket. Chico is acknowledged to be the best bridge player in the village, and plays for a dollar a point. Hugh Walpole is forming an extensive collection of Americana which he intends to give to a British Museum. He is especially fond of Herman Melville firsts, and the New England poets ; he has a huge collection of books published in the 1890's. Jean Hersholt bids at every sale of the American Art Association in the Anderson Galleries, in New York, for first editions. He is a cautious and contemplative buyer, never improvident as we imagine collectors to be. Jean bids purposely low, figuring if he gets one item out of every sale, he is doing well. Hersholt has a fortune in books, many of them Dickens firsts, and prefers to invest his money that way. He and Walpole are bosom companions. Sid Silvers, (the funny man in "Broadway Melody," who wore the girl's clothes), collects Ring Lardner, and is determined to assemble the best collection extant. Speaking of Sid, I have to pause and relate an amusing dialogue between Sid and Harry Ruby which I overheard in the M-G-M commissary the other day. (Sid, who used to stooge for Phil Baker, and get paid for it, now stooges for Harry, gratis.) They passed by a huge baked ham on a side-table. "Who is that?" asked Harry, dead-pan, walking by. "John Barrymore," answered Sid, who knows all the answers. Charles Chaplin's home has practically become Athens on the Hill, in Beverly. He entertains all the psychologists and philosophers. No great thinkers arrive who are not invited to the Chaplin estate, and Charley discusses learnedly with them, too. Frank Capra, director of "It Happened One Night," owns a first edition of the "Decameron," a little item which set him back not more than eight or ten thousand dollars. He also has one of the most discriminating assortments of firsts in great English literature. Joan Crawford is an omniverous' reader of modern literature, reading everything printed as fast as it comes out, but is not particularly discriminating in her choice. Joan has changed greatly in the past five years from the dancing daughter to the cultured lady. In place of Bing Crosby records she now plays the Beethoven Fifth, and has developed, in a phenomenally short time, the appearance of discrimination. Nelson Eddy can be relied upon to entertain a roomful of guests more expertly than perhaps any other singer in town. He has a routine of his own invention which puts them in stitches. You may not know that Nelson is a self-educated young man. He did not even get through high-school. But it would take some sitting up nights to think of a subject to stump him. Nelson is now studying banking and history. He has given all the religions and philosophies a good going over. Earlier in his career, he took seven correspondence school courses. Claudette Colbert goes in for fine bindings of various periods, and has a passion for sets of books by various authors. Her new house should rank high among the genuinely fine dwellings, since it is being architected by Lloyd Wright, foremost architect and son of the celebrated Frank Lloyd Wright. Besides Joseph von Sternberg's really magnificent collection of modern art and sculpture, (he has' the most comprehensive Brancusi in the country), Joe should go down in history for having the largest collection of self-portraits ever assembled. Aside from the picture names who are certainly giving Hollywood a cultural fame, there is, in our midst, a distinguished gentleman named Walter Arensberg who is known to few in the colony but whose fame has extended to far parts of the earth. He has a houseful of magnificent paintings, drawings, and sculpture, many of the modern French now so popular which Mr. Arensberg collected long before the current rage. Some of his items, ("Nude Descending the Stairs," by Duchamps, for instance), were borrowed by the Chicago Exposition for their art gallery. Aside from this interest, the quiet and amazing Mr. Arensberg is the world's greatest authority on the Baconian Theory, with five stenographers working all the time at top speed on his ideas. His library of data and reference books and Shakespeare is perhaps the most extensive in existence. All this goes on in Hollywood, my little dears, the land of wisecracks and dumbbells. C'mon up some time and go over the Einstein Relativity idea — we'll give you a good run for your money and get it all straightened out for you. It Happens in Manhattan whenever they get a breather from the studios that flourish and bloom under the kindly California sun. And those two famous radio J's mentioned up there — Jane and James, the girl and boy who made good in their first film — did declare and affirm, to me at least, that they were glad to be back in town. Ever since Jimmy Melton was declared "in" as a film personage on the strength of his work in "Stars Over Broadway," this typewriter seems to hum a little tune whenever it's called on to click out his name. It's that perennial boast, even more common to humans than to typewriters — the old familiar yawn-inducer, "I told you so." Maybe it's a machine with a memory, (what could be worse?), and recalls it copied out the lines which duly found their way into the pages of Screenland for last October under the guise of a cautious but nonetheless forthright prophecy that Jimmy Melton was a bet, at favorite's odds, to score on the screen. As a collaborator in this daring piece of prediction, I was almost — but surely not quiet — as jittery as Jimmy Melton himself when we two held conversation in an apartment at Mr. Melton's club, the afternoon before the premiere of "Stars Over Broadway." Of course you know that, with the pos Continued from page 59 sible exception of interviewing the condemned who is soon to order that "last hearty meal," there is no place like the presence of a film star about to have his Bonita Granville plays a leading role in the film co-starring Miriam Hopkins and Merle Oberon. picture get one of those premieres, where the conversation will seem as manufactured as the tunes whistled by grave-yard passersby. Melton was a surprise in this respect. Oh, he was plenty nervous. But everything was under control, and that hale and confident manner of his was turned on full whenever he talked about anything but the impending premiere. James Melton got the nickname of "Shorty" around the radio studios, because he's six feet two in his socks. He needed all of the space afforded by a big divan on which he sprawled to stretch out and relax as he talked of Hollywood, and avowed that, much as pictures would mean to _ him if he made good, he would never quit radio. As a subject of conversation he seemed to be interested in explaining why he was feeling pretty wobbly about his career that time I saw him for a Screenland interview about a year ago. "Success came too easy," he said. "When I started in radio most anybody with a pleasing natural voice could shoot right up to the top. But when they started bringing the big vocal artists on the air, it was a case of working up to that standard or passing out. Well, I was never afraid of work, and I did work, and was coming along right up to where I was before. But then it seemed to me I was