Screenland (May-Oct 1936)

98 SCREENLAND chattering girlish voices and lots of laughtor — you have Alice White and her friend Mary Carlisle. Alice is the gangster's decoy in a Gainsborough picture as yet untitled, while Mary appears with Give Brook and Helen Vinson in "Love in Kxilc." Both think London is fine, except that the ice-cream hasn't the same taste. They've seen the Crown Jewels and all the hat-shops and a duchess eating steak in a grill-room, so they're thoroughly enjoying themselves. Come across to this table where Neil Hamilton sits with a circle of British film folk discussing the latest news. (He will soon be seen in a comedy "You Must Get Married.") Flashes : Constance Bennett has instructed her London manager to get her the two finest English race horses that money can buy. She has ordered some rare china and glass for her California home, too. Noah Beery is acting in "The Crimson Circle" and having singing lessons. Sylvia Sidney's first British picture will be directed bv Alfred Hitchcock, who made "The 39 Steps" and "Secret Agent." Silver-haired Gitta Alpar, the lovely operatic star from Vienna who is Europe's Grace Moore, has set a new fashion with white stockings and bright blue shoes. She has had several offers from Hollywood following the success of her first film, "I Give My Heart" but before she can accept one she must finish "Guilty Melody," in which she appears with Nils Asther and John Loder. Pull up the microphone, for conversation has turned to Ronald Colman. He intends" to spend a month's vacation over here in the fall. Somebody remarks that he is now the highest-paid male star in films, and a middle-aged director smiles reminiscently. "I don't suppose any of you remember Ronald's first picture. He made it here in London fifteen years ago, and he was paid the equivalent of four dollars a day. It was a crude spy melodrama in two reels and nobody thought much of Ronald's per formance. In fact, the casting director wrote on his file card 'This actor does not screen very well. Looks better in real life.' It wasn't Ronald's fault because he didn't even understand make-up in those days. His eyes always seemed too close together and his nose came out too large." Somebody else recalls how Ronald met beautiful Thelma Raye while playing a small part in one of those early British films and married her after a whirlwind courtship. When he sailed for New York with just forty dollars and two letters of introduction his wife was to follow in three month's time. But she stayed on in England, acting when she could, obviously missing the husband she adored so deeply. Then suddenly she vanished, and only the news of Ronald's steady climb toward success in Hollywood reached the friends who had known the happy if sometimes hard-up young couple in London. Now it has been discovered that Thelma lives alone in a modest little villa on the Riviera coast, far away from the busy world of stage and studios, cooking her own simple meals and occupying her long leisure hours with needlework. Even when they were divorced she resolutely refused to discuss her husband. But she collects all his photographs and his press-cuttings, keeping them carefully in a special room which nobody but herself ever enters. Truly the private lives of film stars are often more poignant and dramatic than any of the roles they enact before the cameras. Cut quickly for the next item, the scene a pleasant book-lined room in a flat not far from the Strand, and genial baldheaded Edmund Gwenn dispensing the drinks and announcing that he had the happiest time of his life in Hollywood. He is back in London to fulfill an old contract to film "Laburnum Grove," the stage play in which he starred so successfully on Broadway last year. He's full of admiration for Katharine Hepburn. "She's not an imitation of Garbo. She's essentially herself, sincere, unspoiled, vital and tremendously ambitious. I gave her some les sons in chess when we were making 'Sylvia Scarlett' and she grasped the game with amazing quickness." Footage for Paul Cavanagh, just returned to star in a colorful costume film, "Dusty Ermine," which is all about military espionage in the days of Napoleon. Dissolve to a shot of another famous English actor, unfamiliar perhaps as he walks along a quiet suburban road wearing a shabby cloth hat and smoking an ancient briar pipe. Close-up reveals him as George Arliss, enjoying his morning mile which he paces wet or fine as inexorably as he stops work at four o'clock for his afternoon tea. George is tired of being benign and kindly on the screen. In his next film he appears as a wily Eastern rajah — "always scheming, you know. He makes the deuce of a lot of trouble for everybody." Special insert for Michael Balcon, the slim, dark, bespectacled Director of Productions for Gaumont-British who is announcing details of his new contracts that will bring more of the leading Hollywood players to London this summer. "There's Charles Ruggles— he is going to play a comedy part specially suited to him in our film 'World Without a Mask! a story of the future with television and death rays and colossal flying-boats. Joan Bennett has signed for a crime picture, adapted from Edgar Wallace's novel 'The Northern Tramp.' Maureen O'SuIlivan and Richard Arlen will be co-starring in 'The Great Divide,' which describes the construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway. One of our camera units has spent the whole spring out in the West shooting the background scenes." The next news item opens in panoramic, a Continental cafe with a sanded floor and little tables covered with gay checked cloths and gesticulating waiters scurrying about with glasses of absinthe and vin rouge. Men in wide trousers and velvet coats, women with the tight-waisted muslin gowns and the piled-up hair under enormous beflowered hats of forty years ago. It's the Associated Talking Pictures lot where Toeplitz Productions are filming W. J. Locke's celebrated story of old-time Bohemia, "The Beloved Vagabond." Close in to Paragot, the wandering artist hero. Here he sits with his dog and his wine, his long black hair falling from under his odd white cotton hat, a huge spotted bow at his neck, a jaunty little moustache adorning his sun-tanned face. You don't recognize him? Look at his lip again. Yes, it's Maurice Chevalier in the most important part of his screen career. He's giving the cameras everything he's got, for this role is the vindication of his abrupt departure from Hollywood, by which he hopes to prove to the world that he is capable of deeper characterizations and finer acting than are called for in lighthearted musicals. He's no longer the M'rcece we used to know. He seems older and more serious, and he is certainly much thinner. Perhaps he's wondering what his fans will think of his new dramatic screen personality. When Maurice isn't at the studio he is generally attending a vaudeville show or dining at an exclusive little Mayfair restaurant where they understand the finesse of food in the true French fashion. Maurice makes his own crepe suzettes at the sideboard, and mixes his salad dressing with the air of a fastidious connoisseur — nine drops of olive oil, four of vinegar, a soupcon of garlic, the green pepper, and the strong black clove to flavour — ah, voila! There breaks that famous smile and a sigh of satisfaction. But if you want to see those dark eyes flash with anger just lean over and whisper "Kay Francis." That brings the final fadeout, very quickly ! THE CUNEO PRESS , INC., U. S. A.