Screenland (May-Oct 1938)

I USE COLORINSE after each shampoo. || ana,. Just a few seconds— and a few cents! — 1 ■ change drab hair into gleaming radiance, g Complete every shampoo \v ith Nestle Colorinse, the rinse-tint that is so simple and thrifty to use. It's f>ure, harmless; not a dye or hleach. Colorinse removes shampoo film makes your hair soft, fluffy and lustrous. Faded or gray streaks are hlended with the natural color. Waves last longer. Colorinse glorilies your hair! There's a shade of Colorinse for every shade of hair. Consult the Nestle Color Chart at your nearest toilet goods counter today! lOc for package of <2 rinses at 10c stores. 0,5c for 5 rinses at drug and dejjt. stores. JQL COLORINSE I USE SITROUX TISSUES.. ...says beautiful Mary Russell starring in Columbia's new picture "EXTORTION". TWO SIZES 10* STARS of stage and screen, and fastidious girls everywhere, prefer Sitroux Tissues, because they're soft as a flower petal, yet so much stronger they won't "come apart" in the hand,. Give your skin better care with these delightful, fine-quality tissues. Look for the attractive gold-and-blue box! k At Your 5 and M SJOREjJ 88 Benda masks, posturing; because they are egomaniacs; because they are Narcissists in love with their own images, indifferent to all else. They slip because they forget that they are workers with jobs to do, jobs which are interdependent with other jobs and because the stuff of which they are made eventually corrodes the metal of their stardom. A star actually slips, of course, when he doesn't sell. A star slips when the consumer (the fan) prefers to pay his money to see a Myrna Loy instead of a Simone Simon; a star slips when the exhibitors put the name of a Gary Cooper above the name of a Jean Arthur on the theatre marquees. Bill Powell once said to me : "We actors are like so many brands of soup put out by a manufacturer. The manufacturers of stars are, of course, the studios. The studio seasons us with the best condiments, i.e., stories, cameramen, sound men, production value; it advertises us, packages us as attractively as possible and puts us on the counter for sale. The counter being the box office. If we sell, fine. Then the condiments are increased both in quality and quantity, the exploitation goes on apace. But the instant the mulligatawny known as Bill Powell ceases to sell the brand is retired from the lists or disposed of in the less expensive packaging marked 'B' pictures. After all, the studio, like the manufacturer, is in business to make money. If one product doesn't sell, another must be pushed forward." Again we say, but why? Let's consider a few of the cases about whom Hollywood is murmuring "Is she slipping, d'you think?" or "I hear he is on the skids . . . Hollywood is raising arched, interrogative eyebrows over "the strange case of Marlene Dietrich." There are those who say "Slipping? Dietrich has slipped!" There are others who say, as Don Ameche said to me on the set of "Alexander's Ragtime Band," just the other day: "They haven't even scratched the surface of what Marlene can do." There are those who will remind you that a lady with such lustre (and such legs) will be able to keep afloat above any waters of oblivion. It is known that she is in great demand on the air, that she was asked to do a musical comedy on Broadway ; that M-G-M is "dickering" with Dietrich; that Paramount is asking her to "reconsider," to come home, with everything forgiven. . And when you ask what there is to torgive" you are told that Miss Dietrich s pictures did not sell at the box office, that "Garden of Allah," "Desire," 'Angel failed to make money, "Desire" doing the best of the recent crop— perhaps, say the skeptics, because Gary Cooper was in "Desire"? You are told that Paramount spent an approximate million and a quarter on every Dietrich picture, some $7,000,000 in all during the term of her contracts with that studio. You are told that Paramount supplied her with the* best stories they could procure and she would okay, that it was difficult to get a Dietrich okay on a story on a director, a cameraman, the cast. You are reminded that they gave Marlene the best directors, Lubitsch, Frank Borzage and others ; the best cameramen ; the most lavish sets ; carte blanche as to wardrobe— and that in spite of all this prodigal expenditure of time and thought and, dear knows, money, Miss Dietrich's pictures just did not "clean up" at the box office. It is said that Paramount did not make "French Without Tears" with Miss Dietrich because, when she returned from Europe, she asked for an "advance" on the picture before production started, or else— that Paramount, already puzzled and discouraged, took the flung gauntlet and did not make the advance and so Miss Dietrich did not make the picture. Whether or no, SCREENLAND m* rz.7 1"!-. i?SJi . mm Janet Gaynor and Ramon Novarro, her host at a recent party. Paramount and Miss Dietrich did come to a parting of the ways and, at this writing, Miss D. is still "in circulation" though, says Hollywood, it will probably not be long now. Jean Arthur is among those about whom Hollywood is murmuring "Is she slipping?" All of these studio fights, "retirements"— but the consensus of opinion, gleaned from the various studios, seems to be "No." There is, in Hollywood, a definite respect for Jean Arthur. If she is touched with egomania, says Hollywood, it is a quiet egomania and it may, even, be shyness; if Jean, ill-advisedly it seems, stays off the screen, Hollywood credits her with believing that she believes in what she is doing, and why. And if she offends by her absence, at least she doesn't offend by her presence. She is reluctant, usually, to see the Press. But when she does receive the Press she does so courteously. It is rumored that Nelson Eddy is becoming "difficult;" that he is testy on the sets, grudges giving interviews, bites the hands that fed him his first flattery and encouragement ; that now, needing encouragement no longer, he thinks it is "all too silly"— in this very superiority may be found, often, the first seeds of slippingFor it is this superiority which makes those who are up forget, as Paul Muni once put it "that those who go up, must come down." Nelson is well fortified, his voice gives him the radio, concert work and, indeed, the screen, too; and "yet— and yet, warns Hollywood, "how are the mighty fallen !" J . , . Luise Rainer has been mentioned, with a question mark. But Luise, we can tell you definitely, has really been ill, and is, even now, back at the studio again, the question answered. A strange, sensitive temperament, there is a lovableness about "the little Rainer," as Hollywood calls her, which would 'redeem her from any omission of diplomacy she might commit; and there is her great, Academy Award-winning performance in "Good Earth." There is the Strange Case of Garbo : tor the Great Garbo is no longer tops on the box-office listings nor, so far as we can discover, among the First Tens. But Garbo is still tops with the foreign box office. And no matter what a star's standing with the American box office may be, if popularity is maintained at the foreign box office that star still makes money for her studio. Such is the huge revenue made by our pictures in the countries to which they are freely admitted. And there is this to be said about Garbo . she may not be beloved by Hollywood