Screenland (Nov 1940-Apr 1941)

wood. Blue to match Miss Carroll's eyes is the dominating color of the wardrobe which includes three suits and three sport frocks and two riding outfits. Sticklers for reality, the wardrobe department has marked her purses with C. D. Throughout the rigors of location the honey-haired star's one refuge was her dressing-room trailer marked Dodsburg Farms and with the picture of a horse. Truman Dodson, Albemarle sportsman, donated the trailer to moviedom's thoroughbred. The horsey trailer failed to strike an incongruous note since horses may steal the show from Carroll, MacMurray, et a!. If they should, the honor will be well earned. After all, the Farming-ton Hunt Club members rode in the point-to-point race when the mercury hovered at blood heat. In their heavy formal hunting attire the riders and horses gave 2000 pounds of flesh to dear old Paramount. This ton of weight streamed off the steaming flanks of the horses and down the exposed necks and faces of the society riders. In a costume designed after those of the Farmington members, Stirling Hay den was set off to best advantage in his pink coat, yellow waistcoat, white stock, whipcord breeches, boots and spurs and black hunting helmet. Joined by the English star in her Oxford grey coat and derby, the couple looked as if they had just stepped from Epsom Downs. Rodger Rinehart, joint M. F. H. of the club who donated 17 pounds to the picture, assisted Cullen Tate with race technicalities. Native son Rinehart shared technical advisor honors with Edward Delaplane de Butts of Upperville upper crust. Imported from Hollywood by Griffith to his home State, de Butts held the final word on the authenticity of Virginia properties. No snob, de Butts is the brother of Hunter de Butts, general manager of the Virginia division of the Southern Railway, whose wife is Mary Custis Lee, Marse Henry's granddaughter and direct descendant of Martha Washington. As a sailor and aviator Ed has barnstormed the world since boyhood. When he hit Hollywood in his wanderings a couple of years ago it wasn't long before the studios were calling him for bit roles. Actor too in "Virginia," he plays a tenant farmer, speaking with an authentic down country accent. Picture-goers will hear another true Virginia accent in the film. It will be sophisticate Tom Rutherfurd speaking. Rutherfurd, born ole Virginny double "o" Rutherfoord, substituted a "u" to facilitate playbill (someday marquee) reading. Vir ginia kin, thrilled at Tom's success are a little irked with him for mutilating his distinguished name, but he explains patiently that Rutherfoord looks like a typographical error. Not wanting to confuse the world, he made his break with tradition. As a mad man, his mouth frothing with tooth paste, Tom made his acting debut across the river from Bremo, where he does a big scene with Madeleine Carroll. Pointing across the James River he said, My home, Rock Castle, is over yonder. It seems queer to be over here in the movie when only a few years ago I was on that lawn playing in 'Damon and Pythias with Edith and Jim." The long upper lip typical of the English house of Windsor gives Tom a savoir faire which people expect of his personality, but actually he is a genuine sort. He insists he isn't— says, "I am exactly like Carter Francis in this picture." For reader information, Carter is a professional Virginian who sells out to the Northerners and whines continually, "I think I shall kill myself !" That perpetual surprise packet, Marie Wilson, plays opposite Tom in the role of 84 Mrs. Potter, a nouveau riche Yankee, anxious to convert Dunterry into a hunt club. Low comedy dumb parts belong to Marie's strange history now that Mr. Griffith has offered her an amusing role with plenty of opportunity to reveal the figure that made Petty's telephones famous. Speaking slowly as she gazed through those inch-long lashes (the real thing, too) Mane said, "You know, Mr. Griffith is the first director to realize that a comedienne can have sex appeal.'' Pie-slinging comedy or Eugene O'Neill tragedy would never obscure that fact about Martha Scott recently became the bride of Carleton W. Alsop, radio executive who has been directing her broadcasts in the dramatic serial," The Career of Alice Blair," which Martha will continue, in addition to her screen work. Marie, it's too apparent ; but the earnest girl cares more about being an actress than a "great big beautiful doll." This may be the reason : "I have wanted to really be a great actress since the time I made a personal appearance. The papers next morning said, 'Marie Wilson has a perfect chassis, but it's certainly not wired for sound.' It's up to me now to prove they were wrong." In spite of the competition she arouses, women like the little blonde, are captivated by her sweet friendliness and ready wit. That publicity build-up as a dumb-bell leads listeners to expect anything but what they get. There's naivete, all right, but it's salted down with a wisdom to put Socrates to shame. Not to be outdone by Rutherfurd and his centuries of Virginia tradition, the pert little Wilson girl unearthed the memory of a rebel grandfather, one Isaac Wilson. As a Virginia lad he marched into battle before the boys in grey carrying the Confederate flag. When Hollywood came to Virginia, ancestors and kinsfolk worship began in earnest. There were more grandfathers to come when negro character actress Louise Beavers remarked quietly one day, "I would sure like to visit Ash Lawn, James Monroe's old place. My grandfather and his father were slaves there." That was no idle wish since Ash Lawn was only a few minutes from Charlottesville. Jolly Louise removed her middle-aged make-up of Aunt Ophelia and was escorted to Ash Lawn, where her slave forebears had toiled long before movies or Louise were born. "My grandfather was named James Monroe, too," she said. "He left here when he was 17, that was in 1853, to go to Ohio, where' I was born. His father before him was named James Monroe, but he never left the place." The popular actress was touched by the coincidence of the homecoming. "You know," she murmured, "I feel as if I had come home at last, particularly when I touch these iron pots and skillets my folks once used." Miss Beavers is the first member of her family to return to the white frame house which Jefferson designed for the author of the Monroe Doctrine. Her mother, Ernestine Monroe Beavers, had intended to visit Virginia, but death halted this plan in 1930. After this visit to her ancestral home. Miss Beavers admitted, "I have been playing Southern mammy roles for a long time, but I believe that Ophelia in 'Virginia' will be the most sympathetic, now that I've been home and seen where I really originated." Proud of his Virginia ties, soft-spoken Leigh Whipper, cast as the aged slave, Ezekial, revealed, "My wife, Lillian Miles Whipper, is an Orange County girl." Orange County was about 20 miles from location. Lean-faced Whipper, who made his great stage and screen success in "Of Mice and Men," as embittered Crooks, plays the first sympathetic role of his 40-year acting career. Patience and willingness to suffer discomfort were the penalties Whipper paid for the part. Every morning he sat quietly while Wally Westmore or one of his assistants converted him into a 100-year-old man. It took one hour to apply the rubber composition for wrinkles, scraggly beard, sagging eye-pockets and discolored teeth.' Whipper, the son of an M.D. father and Ph. D. mother, hankered after a physician's degree himself, but was packed off to law school, which he hated. His first stage role was_ that of an oldster in "Uncle Tom's Cabin" and since then he has played in "Emperor Jones," "Stevedore," "Porgy and Bess," and "Three Men on a Horse." In spite of all this, he says, "I still think I would've made a whopping good doctor." The stand-ins, always in the shadow of the camera when it isn't rolling, came in for their share of well-earned glory when Virginia ancestry was mentioned. With the exception of Madeleine Carroll's stand-in, these boys and girls were natives. Cynosure for all eyes, even when MacMurray and Hayden were in sight, was Lee McLaughlin, Fred's stand-in. Captain of the University of Virginia football team this season, McLaughlin, son of a Richmond, Va., minister, tips the scales at 210 pounds and stands over six feet. If Hollywood is looking for more new faces, Lee graduated in June. Any takers? When Roland Asher, assistant director, discovered Jeannette Muhlenfeld, Carroll's stand-in, he wasn't aware that he was picking a girl who could take foot punishment. As a University of Virginia graduate nurse.