Silver Screen (May-Oct 1934)

62 Silver Screen for July 1934 Where's That Ball and Chain? [Continued from page 34] STOPS PAIN — REMOVES CORN a new and better CORN PLASTER • Here's the Safest— and the best— corn plaster, with exclusive features that increase its comfort and efficiency. Drybak, made by Johnson & Johnson, was professionally designed to fit snugly -without bulging; to stay put; to stop pain and remove a corn effectively. • Drybak is streamlined— it has no square corners, no overlapping edges, no excessive bulk. It is more quickly and accurately applied. It does not creep. Drybak is waterproof. You can bathe without changing plasters. Its sun-tan color is less conspicuous — does not soil. • Drybak's smooth surface will not chafe or stick to the stocking. Costs less than old-fashioned, creepy, bulky plasters. In boxes of 12, with 8 individual medicated centers, 25c. Buy Drybak Corn Plasters at your druggist's. ALSO NEWDRYBAK WATERPROOF BUNION AND CALLOUS PLASTERS spent three years as a crooner and orchestra leader there and he had many friends. When he finally le£t his Indianapolis theater job and started playing and singing with a dance orchestra, he found he had all day to himself with nothing to do. Meanwhile he had collected a considerable amount of fan mail. So he sat down and answered the letters, all of them, and in answering them he explained to each admirer that he had decided to try to make a little extra money by selling automobile insurance on the side and would appreciate any business that could be turned his way. "I made a thousand dollars extra that year," Dick says, "and I would have made much more if I hadn't left Indianapolis a few months later for Pittsburgh. Somebody got all the 'repeat' business." This heretofore untold bit of Powell biography is typical of Dick Powell. He is resourceful and energetic— and a natural money maker. Generous as he is with his time, his talents and his money, he nevertheless saves a substantial part of all he earns and in the most approved and conservative fashion he is building up an estate of no small proportions. He has never been without a "sideline" of some kind since the day his father bought him his first cornet. That important event took place in Mt. View, Arkansas, where Dick was born. In the same town a railroad engineer, a friend of the family, taught Dick, while still a baby, to sing "Casey Jones." In spite of this the engineer remained a friend. Dick's father sold farm machinery and moved with his family, while Dick was still a small boy, to Little Rock, which is still the town Dick calls home, although Louisville, Indianapolis and Pittsburgh all claim the distinction of having "discovered" him. While Dick was never rich, neither was he ever poor. Like most boys, he got a job about the time he entered high school. In fact he got several jobs. He worked for the local telephone company, as mentioned before, sang in choirs, at weddings, funerals and lodge benefits and played with a small local orchestra. His fame as a singer spread eventually to Louisville, where he accepted a job singing with a concert orchestra. Up to that time Dick had never sung popular music and did not know how to "croon." The story of his success in Louisville, Indianapolis and then Pittsburgh, has been told many times, except for the insurance-selling incident. His first appearance as a real "crooner" was in a suburban theater in Pittsburgh where he had to sing in a theater so long and narrow that he used a small megaphone to make himself heard in the back rows. As master of ceremonies at the Stanley theater in Pittsburgh he claimed attention, finally, of studio scouts who sent him to New York to make camera tests for the Warner Brothers picture "The Crooner." He didn't get that role, for reasons beyond his control, but he arrived a few months later in Hollywood to play a slightly disagreeable role in "Blessed Event." Before he went back to Pittsburgh and the stage he had signed a long term contract with Warner Brothers— a contract which is still in force after the exercise of many options, and which has brought the public such pictures as "42nd Street," "Gold Diggers of 1933," "Footlight Parade," "Wonder Bar," "20,000,000 Sweethearts," and "Dames." Since that time Dick Powell has become one of the important new box office stars of the screen. Since that time, too, he has become one of the most eligible young bachelors of Hollywood, excepting, of course, for that "gentleman's agreement" he has with Warner Brothers not to marry before 1935. When Dick first arrived in Hollywood he was still married, although he and the girl he married early in his career in Little Rock, had long been separated. They have since been divorced and it is understood that she has married again. But Dick hasn't remarried. Instead he hastilv bound himself to remain single. Now he wants to renege! Nobody seems to know why. Onlv time will tell. Is Hollywood Killing Its Leading Men; [Continued from page 31] do the work." "The only way we can get around the situation is by insisting in our contracts, for a consecutive— if we want it— number of weeks in which to get away and rest. Whether or not we can beat the game by doing this, remains to be seen. I think we can-for a while anyway. My new contract with Metro calls for sixteen consecutive weeks-and from what I hear— all the other fellows are getting the same sort of contracts now. We're waking up to the fact that we are only human. And I believe that the producers are beginning to realize this fact also." A week before Bob arrived at the Grand Central Terminal, a young man stepped aboard the Twentieth Century leaving for the West. His face is as familiar to the hundred million inhabitants of this country, as their very own. His eyes were wistful as he took a farewell look around the busy depot. He had had a grand time for a few short weeks— but it was all over, an he was headed back for the eternal grind. The expression on his face was that of boy on the closing of a school holiday. The bov was Clark Gable. Last yea when Clark was making "Dancing Lady, he looked like a ghost. Thousands of fan poured anxious letters into the studios an press offices concerning his health. He ha been in the hospital, a complete physica wreck for weeks. The relentless fingers o time and money had forced him from hi. sick-bed back to work. He carried a doze or more red, angry stitches under the ban dages on his right side. Two doctors stoo in constant attendance on the set to rusl to his aid, when his strength would giv out. And when the picture was released everyone saw— inasmuch as it is somewha difficult to deceive the eye of the camera how ill he looked. His cheeks were sunken his whole body seemed tired and exhaust ed, and the dark shadows under his eye D RYB A K CORN PLASTERS . Q MtW t«UN»*»iC<. H 7 ■ \J CHICAGO, HI.