Silver Screen (Feb-Oct 1935)

THEIR lois A Great Talent Requires More Rehearsing Than A Trained Flea. yy ORK THE current social sea , son in Hollywood M threatens to be a jjl forlorn flop. It's really serious. Night clubs are actually echoing with emptiness and if the most popular film hostesses laid all the regrets to 1 their exclusive dinners end to end, they. f would probably all' i go to a sanitarium ' for the winter (the hostesses, of course). You see, during the past year, all I lie upper crust boys and girls out here have discovered that practice (lots of it) often turns a lot of em lj| barrassing imperfections into some very screenable trumps, the sort that cause the studio front-office boys to do some fancy bidding. It's this new practice dragnet, and not romance, that has caused Joan Crawford to drop out quite suddenly from all our social whirligigs. "I'm sorry, my singing lessons, my practicing, you know—" is Joan's sweet but firm rebuff to all invitations to play these days. Two hours every day with her vocal instructor, Otto Morando, is her relentless schedule. Sometimes, when she is working, the lessons take place at midnight, but they TAKE PLACE. The story that lurks behind Joan's fanatical determination to become a lyric soprano or bust, comprises an amazing tidbit even in Hollywood. It seems that for years and years, Joan has dreamed of doing, someday, the title role in "The Merry Widow." When she learned last year that Lubitsch had been signed to megaphone the epic for M-G-M, she made her yearnings known in the places it would do the most good. But the sad, sad fact that her singing voice was doubtful in the high places put her out of the running before the starting shot. Well, THAT couldn't happen twice to anyone named Joan Crawford. Several days later Mr. Morando was hired, and Joan has slaved at daily breathing exercises, the monotony of scales and the humdrum business of diaphram control ever since. But the village rumor runners have it that Joan's vocal equipment is now blossoming into a set of superbly trained instruments, and that Morando is now suggesting the possibility of grand opera to his prolific pupil, and that Joan isn't exactly putting her hands over her ears when the subject is mentioned. You'll be able to judge Joan's new voice in her next picture "Reckless," in which she is scheduled to sing two difficult numbers. And if you think Joan is a martyr to the practice-makes-perfectcredo, take a look, a long one, at Fred Astaire. He spent three By Juke Lang Hunt Fred Astaire, who is stepping into a Ibig place on the screen, has to protect his practice hours by special leases. whole months in Hollywood making "The Gay Divorcee," and was never seen outside the studio, actually not even once! When cocktail gatherings and amusing buffets were mentioned to him, his Chcsterfieldian refusals always gave work as an excuse, but he never revealed what kind of work. However, the tenants in his apartment house could have informed many a baffled hostess on this score, for Fred Astaire practices his table— to divan— to chafr dance routine many hours a day and night. He is actually afraid to stop practicing. A close friend of his told me that once or twice he let down the grinding pace of home practicing, and both times he suffered terrific spills, right on the stage, too. And both times those falls resulted in injuries to his priceless tendons that kept him bedridden for several weeks. Astaire actually gets clauses written into his apartment leases permitting him to dance as much as he likes and at any hour of the day or night. Now the Crosbys are known lo every fan in and out of Hollywood as the champion stay-at-home couple. But the new twins and Gary Evans aren't the only reason Bing and Dixie spend seven nights weekly in the music room of their Toluca Lake home. 22 Silver Screen