Screenland (Nov 1940-Apr 1941)

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Pinkham's WtSSMMW^ Vegetable Compound to help quiet unstrung nerves, relieve monthly pain (cramps, backache, headache) and distress from weak, nervous, dizzy spells due to periodic disturbances. Pinkham's Compound has relieved such rundown nervous feelings for thousands of women. WORTH TRYING! Not for all the tobacco in North Carolina would he change his story. He's as sure he's right as a man can be. His conviction is based upon the cold, merciless revelation of the camera. He has looked, he says, and found it wanting Great Lovers among bandleaders. _ . "They may be romantic. They may even look romantic when the lights are dimmed and they're turning the heat up a bit on Grieg and Rimsky-Korsakoff, and the disillusioning waiter with the check is a good two hours away. But they can't act romantic. They're merely the instruments, the gods out of the machine through which their listeners act romantic. "If a bandleader could act romantic he wouldn't be a bandleader. He'd be an actor. He can't act romantic because he is too familiar with the tricks, the agents that create a magic spell. He can turn on a magic spell merely by coaxing the Moonlight Sonata through the clarinets. He can turn it off just as quickly by a serving of boogie-woogie. How can a man act romantic who turns a music rack from Moonlight Sonata to Beat Me, Daddy, Eight to the Bar?" The bandleader who is still known to his mother as James, though the whole wide world calls him Kay, is in pictures up to his eye-glasses in spite of the lack, for him, of romantic opportunity. He's in them for the fun and the money. He can also be himself, even though he's surrounded by Karloffs and Lugosis and Lorres on the one hand and eye-filling honeys on the other. Being himself, he is sticking to his big horns to get his oomph. The Professor has some decided notions upon his particular niche in movieland. For one thing, there will never be a ragsto-riches theme for him and the boys. They will not start out in a broken-down flivver and by some lucky stroke (it almost came out "strike") suddenly become famous over night. "There's nothing worse," says Kay, "than putting a band into a picture unless there's some logical reason for doing it. I consented to go to Hollywood only upon the condition that there would be a legitimate excuse for the band's appearance and that the cast be a good one. I was not disappointed. A good excuse was provided for the band, and I was honored to know that my scared-rabbit manner needed the contrast of not one screen horror man, but three." He was never so close before to personi fied menace, but he looks back upon the experience with considerable relish. He found the Messrs. Karloff , Lugosi and Lorre amiable, cultured, mild-mannered men — off the set. Men who" raise not hell but petunias, who romp not with wolves but with children, who drink not rum and vodka but bovril and tea. On the set he found them uniquely helpful. It is difficult to believe, but Kay Kyser learned much about the art of timing from the goosefleslr trio. For years he has practiced the art. He had come to believe he was a master of it, whether he was pointing for a laugh or a song or the tense accents of a radio announcer. Yet it took Karloff, Lugosi and Lorre (and by the way, why isn't there a song called Karloff, Lugosi and Lorre?) to show him how deftly men can manage fractions of seconds. Kyser was more impressed by the uncanny sense of timing of the horror men than by anything else save the homey, carpet-slippered scene he invariably met up with at night. Wherever he went he always found people sitting around in carpet slippers discussing current affairs. He couldn't have gone to the right places. Or maybe the people he saw wanted to make him feel at home. Hollywood, you know, can be so hospitable, so adaptable. There's a homespun friendliness about Kyser that has persisted with him ever since his Rocky Mount, N. C, days, despite his sojourns in the sophisticated centers of the land. Kay found Hollywood not unlike Rocky Mount — folksy rather than fervid. Gone was any indication that the hour was eternally sex o'clock. More important to the unromantic maestro was the absence of the old brush-off. The attitude was a change from what he observed when he first hit Hollywood. When he and his crew made their first picture the movie colony looked down its nose and said:' "Oh, well, just another bandleader!" But then, Hollywood had seen plenty of orchestra leaders come in swing time and go out in a dirge. He made his picture. There was the inevitable preview. Some persons liked the film and some didn't. It went out to the theaters and set up quite a noise on the cash registers. The echo was heard in Hollywood, and so when Kay arrived for his second picture he found, if not the red velvet laid for him, at least cordiality. "I know I can't rest on any past laurels. So I just proceeded to put the band Always together and still romancing, Lana Turner and Tony Martin, above, Beverly Hills Hotel Palm Room. They're together on the screen, too, in "1 Len TP dining iiegfeld etssman in the Girl." SCREENLAND