Screenland (May-Oct 1936)

for August 19 3 6 73 year ago told us stories of the soft-voiced star. "She's a retiring kind of girl," he said. "Not quite sure of herself and always very nervous at parties. She has a curious little superstition. Whenever she walks along a passage she always touches the wall with one hand for luck. She generally wears something green because she believes it is her fortunate color." Even so, we were hardly prepared for Sylvia herself. Wearing a trim dark brown suit with a frilled white vest, she alighted from her carriage and as her welcoming admirers clustered around, she suddenly burst into tears and hid her face in her hands. Police came to the rescue and carried her bodily off the platform into the waiting car, anxiously followed by the reception committee of studio officials, speech and presentation flowers forgotten now. "She's had an attack of panic," they said. "She'll recover when she gets away from the crowd." So it was several hours later before we could actually meet Sylvia at her hotel Still looking frightened, she sat beside masses of summer lilac like a modernistic porcelain figure completing the picture. Her dark hair was brushed away from her face into a boyish crop and thick deep crimson lacquer covered her finger-nails, valiant touch of sophistication for this sensitive little girl — you'd never believe she was twenty-six years old. "I'm just a worker," she averred. "I've made seventeen pictures these last five years because I love work so much. I think I should die if I had to give it up. Work is all I live for — work and being alone." Visitors are forbidden at the studio where Sylvia enacts her passionate tragic wife-role behind locked doors and lunches alone in her dressing-room rather than join her fellow-players in the big restaurant. Certainly she's the shyest and most individual of all the lovely ladies who have come to grace London for us this summer season ! Then there's glamorous little Lupe Velez of the dark flashing eyes, come to play the star part in a new British musical film called "Gypsy Melody." Lupe must be dreaming rhythm these sunny days, for in addition to all the tunes in the Elstree studios, she is nightly serenaded by a crowd of street musicians — shabby singers, ragged violinists, pavement maestros of the trumpet and the saxophone and even the ancient grinding barrel-organ who stand outside her window and play her favorite songs. You see, on the night Lupe first arrived in London two old vagrant banjoists happened to set up their tinkling airs in the street adjoining Lupe's hotel. With characteristic impetuosity, the Mexican star rushed out on to her balcony and threw them a handful of money — nearly twenty pound notes for she hadn't been told about British currency and vaguely imagined each green and white bill was only worth about a dollar instead of nearly five ! Naturally the news of this sensational generosity travelled, and the next night there was such a grand concourse of musicvendors ranged before Lupe's window the hotel manager wondered whether to summon the. police. But although Lupe had learned about pound notes during the day, she was still far from skinflint, and she went out to toss down some money and a gay kiss to her new friends. Now they come every evening and Lupe adores it, listening to her favorite tango tunes as she dresses for din London Continued from page 23 ner and putting on that flaming lipstick to the sound of a real old English country ballad. If you watch the striped awning of another great hotel farther along the street you may see Dolores Del Rio walk out, graceful, vital, and so flawlessly beautiful with her cream satin skin and classic features. She is making a dramatic film "Accused!" for Criterion Films, the new producing company headed by Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. Dolores plays Gaby Seymour, a vaudeville dancer who is put on trial for murdering another artiste, and Douglas Junior is her devoted husband, Tony. It's rather an unusual part for her, modern and sophisticated with touches of clever humor to counterbalance the tenser moments. Going to have tea with Dolores the other afternoon, I opened the white door of her suite and thought the lovely exotic star 1 Anna Sten says hello as she comes back to Ameica to make another Hollywood film. Welcome, Anna! had suddenly gone mad. There she stood in the center of the room holding a wickedlooking knife, her brown eyes glowing, her chiselled nostrils dilated with fury. As she bent forward and hurled the blade I turned to flee, but Dolores' laugh rang out like the clear chime of the convent bells in her native land. "Come in ! I shall not murder you. I am only rehearsing." She showed me her target-board fixed on the wall, at which she practices assiduously every day for the big emotional scene of the film which calls for her to throw a Spanish knife with deadly accuracy. Then she sat down and talked. She told me how pleased she was to find she could still enjoy regular tennis and swimming exercise in London, how she had bought some old books and several flagons of our garden scents like lavender and fern to add to the celebrated perfume "collection" she keeps on illuminated glass shelves in her Hollywood home. She confessed unexpectedly that Ramona was her own favorite role. "I am happier playing a simple woman because I am one myself. I did not feel at ease when I had to be an elaborate worldly lady like Madame Du Barry." She smiled affectionately at husband Cedric Gibbons, who's handsome enough to turn romantic actor if he grows tired of being an art director. He drives her out to the studio every day and they often have a quiet supper together at a little tamale restaurant in Bohemian Soho rather than join the gay society throng. Miriam Hopkins has been another of our stellar visitors this summer, welcomed so enthusiastically that admiring fans went down to meet her ship and stormed her stateroom at six o'clock in the morning. When Miriam sleepily opened the door — in oyster satin pajamas and a quilted rose-pink wrap. Miriam really called in at London to look us over for she is due to make a film here this fall for Criterion — Fairbanks, Junior, is certainly becoming Star Stealer No. 1. Then she left for Russia, first stoppingplace of a hustling vacation trip that included Germany, Denmark, Sweden, Holland— to see the bulbfields in bloom — France and several other countries. She beat Harpo Marx's famous time-record for The Complete Grand European Tour by half a day, afterwards returning to London for another brief stay before sailing for home, tireless, eager, electrically vital as ever. Wearing a Grecian-style frock of glowing green, Miriam was able to attend one of the gayest events of our social season, the opening of the new cabaret at the stately Dorchester overlooking Hyde Park. The show is called "A Bit of Hollywood in London" because all the girls have danced in the big musical films in the California studios. There was Helen Vinson in a closefitting scarlet crepe gown that had a huge diamond clasp at the high neckline and pretty Diana Napier with Richard Tauber, full of enthusiasm about his operatic picture "Pagliacci" just completed and proudly calling his friends' attention to his greatly-diminished waistline. Sandra Rambeau looked as though she had stepped out of a Goldwyn spectacle in a silver lame suit with long black gloves and over two feet of paradise plumes mounted on her skull-cap. Virginia Cherrill was demure in pearl-grey chiffon. Even Anna Sten made one of her rare appearances in public. Placid and gentle, almost earnest-looking in repose, she wore unrelieved white and seemed somehow odd in those brilliant sophisticated surroundings. "I don't like a lot of people," Anna said to me once, "I wish I could enjoy myself among crowds but they only seem to overwhelm me." Now Anna and her dark muscular husband Eugene Frencke have gone to America so that Anna can fulfill her old-standing contract to make another Hollywood picture which will be a love-legend of medieval Italy called "The Witch." In the early winter they are due back for Anna to act with Leslie Howard here in a historical romance — Leslie arrived for his British filming season last week with eleven polo ponies, a car, and over fifty trunks. Margot Grahame is home in London too for a spell, chiefly to see her husband, curly-haired Francis Lister, who is one of the finest dramatic players on the British lots. (He was recently Otto Kruger's doctor friend in "Living Dangerously.") Valerie Hobson has also hurried over for a few breaths of her native air and is hoping very much she won't find herself assigned to yet another murder film when she returns to Hollywood. Anita Louise spent her vacation looking round London, sweetly shy with the reporters, for she takes her sightseeing very seriously.