Screenland (May-Oct 1937)

Turning the spotlight on the film favorites in and around British studios By Hettie Grimstead ondon OPEN in an exclusive Piccadilly restaurant, the scene the green and gold salon where many famous folk are lunching. Rudy Vallee sits opposite blonde little June Clyde, all in purple, their neighbors being Ruth Chatterton and the Lawrence Tibbetts. Not far away Edmund Lowe is heartily dissecting a Spanish omelette with fried cauliflower, while that glamorous vision in the wine-red frock with a yellow jacket is none other than Merle Oberon, well and happy again now and entertaining a gay partv. Her guests include Charles Laughton and Elsa Lanchester and lovely Vivien Leigh, who's enjoying the peche melba with never a care for her lithe young figure. Vivien and handsome Laurence Olivier proved such a successful romance team in "Fire Over England" that they are now making passionate love to each other again in a new film called "The First and the Last," based on the late John Galsworthy's novel. It's being produced under Alexander Korda's auspices at Denham — oh, Alex may be paying a flying visit to Hollywood but he doesn't let the details escape ni Adele Astaire, right, with her husband, Lord Cavendish, and brother Fred, makes her long-awaited screen debut in Britain soon. Below, Nova Pilbeam, Paul Lukas, and Anna Neagle, other pets in the London limelight. ports of his executives on the days work, and issues his comprehensive instructions for the next twenty-four hours. He's passed the scenario for Merle Oberon's coming film in which she will play a Russian ballet-dancer called Tamara and is now busy ordering the preliminaries of his Fall production in which Merle and Robert Donat are to be the stellar lovers. Next lap shows a stage where Phoenix Films are shooting "Brief Ecstasy," with Paul Lukas made up as a middle-aged university professor in love with one of his youthful pupils. Paul's charming smile and warm Hungarian voice thank me as I carry over two cups of coffee and sit down companionably beside him just off-set. He tells me about the new plane he has just bought, a necessity because when he is in California he lives out at Palm Springs and flies to Hollywood for his work. He says that when the orange-groves are in full bloom you can smell their gorgeous perfume as high up as eight thousand feet ! He's been buying old glass and china in London, wandering round antique shops in little streets off the beaten track with his characteristic quietness. Flash of Wallace Ford having twenty darts boards despatched to Hollywood as gifts to his friends including Spencer Tracy, Lew Ayres, and Pat O Bnen Only one feminine name was on Wally's list, that of Ginger Rogers. "She's a grand guy, y* see," Wally explains, "just like a reg'lar feller." Flash of Alfred Hitchcock, literally the biggest director in British pictures, busy writing in the shady rose-garden at Pinewood wedged into an enormous chair that would hold two ordinary-sized men quite comfortably. He's approving the dress schedule for his new mystery him starring seventeen-year-old Nova Pilbeam and John Loder. Flash of George Arliss in his country cottage where he seeks relaxation from London noise these week-ends, his low-ceilinged study furnished with old maps, brass candlesticks, and antique oak chairs and tables. They have made a replica of it for his new film "Doctor Syn because it is the perfect period room such as would have been used by the old-time parson George portrays with his usual dignity. is returning to (Please turn to page /X) George 51