Screenland (Nov 1940-Apr 1941)

WHO says two actresses can't possibly become genuinely good friends? Mary Astor had never met Bette Davis until they worked together in "Her Great Lie." Now they're as thick as thieves. They met on the set as two professionals vieing with each other, woman against woman. By every Hollywood token each should have developed, then and there, a cynical and uncanny distrust of the other. But before they had finished, their first day of work such a warm affinity had been cemented between them that they were busy exchanging recipes and gladly sharing tricky knitting stitches. Knitting was the first mutual interest that they discovered in each other. Now they have found that they are similar in more ways than any other person either of them has ever known. They think very much alike. They find they run to the same choice of reading material and their favorite colors are the same. They talk very much alike, and to cinch it, they almost always wear the same scent in their perfumes. JACK OAKIE is chuckling louder than anyone over his amazing spurt back to popularity, particularly after a duo of oh-so-important producers at an oh-soaverage studio had pessimistically greased the skids that they felt were ushering Jack out of pictures — and fast. Before Oakie's career took the decided up-swing after the success of "The Great Dictator" and "Tin Pan Alley," he had made an average little flickeroo at this average little cinema plant and with Jack's popularity not being up to what it once had been, the producers kicked him down another rung by practically cutting him out of the picture altogether. Now you should see the animated maneuvering that's going on to resurrect some of those scenes and get them slipped back into that picture. K A AY ROBSON'S years of collecting ' V I bizarre and antique jewelry always got the polite but questioning forbearance of all her family and friends. Now May's collection is so varied and complete that her rental of authentic pieces to the studios has many times over paid for the entire lot . . . You should see the sedate business men, out for a constitutional along Beverly Hill's parkways, stop and stare, and turn and stare again, when Laraine Day bicycles past in a form-fitting dusty pink sweater and gleaming white short shorts. 64 Above, Margaret Sullavan and Charles Boyer in "Back Street, "film version of Fannie Hurst's novel. The off-stage shots, right and opposite page, prove there can be harmony between co-stars. ANYONE would swear it was a most 1 cleverly contrived publicity quip, if it couldn't be proved that it is the bare and startling truth. All through the rehearsals and shooting of "The Letter," James Stephenson had a strange feeling that the setting and actual rooms of the plantation bungalow seemed strangely familiar to him. He had lived in the Malay States and finally he laid the association to the fact that it was seeing things so authentically reproduced that brought about the strong feeling of familiarity. Then, suddenly, in a casual conversation with a friend of the author, Somerset Maugham, Stephenson happened to bring to light that he had once lived at a certain address in Upper Gayland Road in Singapore. Then — how extraordinary— it was the very house Maugham had once lived in himself, and which he had actually described in his original story. I WONDER what happened to so annoy I Jean Arthur the other day in one of the very smartest dress shops in town. As you know, Jean is the most democratic and yet the most hot headed actress in Hollywood, and something really serious must have gone awry to put her in such a pet. She stormed out of that gilded maison de couturiere onto the crowded street yanking her furs behind her. She stood impatiently tapping her irate toes at the curb waiting for the doorman to order around her car. She drew herself to her full height of haughty disdaui, but the tiniest flick of amusement came into her eyes when she realized her tempestuous flourish wasn't ending in true Hollywood tradition. Instead of a sleek, long black limousine with a natty chauffeur drawing around, the attendant whipped up in a tiny, modest combination station wagon and general utility car. With the broadest of gestures the fellow swung open the door and ushered her in. She slipped under the wheel and drove it off herself. \VOU can't, get Bill Lundigan out on the ' floor, to join the square dances that th< town's young bloods are getting hysterica! over lately at the Cocoanut Grove. Ht stands on the sidelines and claps out e spirited accompaniment, but he won't gel out and strut. Jackie Cooper is just th{ opposite. When they start calling out th{ dos-a-dos you can't keep him from swinging out . Artie Shaw is still the mosl intense bogie-wogie music maestro in town. Artie can get into such a heap of knots and emotions from playing an engagement that he finds it just impossible to sleep. Any of these early morning hours peek in at any of our fancier bowling alleys and there you are very apt to see Artie. He often rolls 'em until 6 a.m. ... Attached to the present that Bob Taylor handed Barbara Stanwyck just before she made her first_ airplane flight with him (Mrs. Taylor insisted on another pilot going along, just in case) was the following note: "It don't mean a thing if you don't pull that string." The present turned out to be a parachute. THOSE pranksters who can be found on ' any movie set in town, who bring hilarious moments to gag-happy Hollywood, and sometimes, instead, a great loss of time and patience, have found themselves a brand new laugh-getter. The days of the electrically wired chairs now have a new "hot" variation. "Hot foot" and "hot chair" have now given way to "hot pockets,"; and the gag really reached an amusing and shattering climax when someone dared to dent the unruffled dignity of our one and' only "Mr." Muni. At a completely unsuspected moment a demon dropped a newfangled hair curler into the great actor's pockets as he stepped before the camera. When the chemical action started to generate heat, they say the straight faced squirming girations of completely baffled Muni, had some of the loonier nitwits tively limp in doubled over laughter.