We use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) during our scanning and processing workflow to make the content of each page searchable. You can view the automatically generated text below as well as copy and paste individual pieces of text to quote in your own work.
Text recognition is never 100% accurate. Many parts of the scanned page may not be reflected in the OCR text output, including: images, page layout, certain fonts or handwriting.
PRESS CLIPPINGS!"
By Ed Sullivan
The popular Don Ameche. Is his laugh growing stale?
The manliness of Robert Taylor is not in doubt any more.
because it is a colony of incredible snobbery, and the daily routine of "keeping up with the Joneses" is an exhausting process. It is a process that exhausts salaries, dignity, modesty and a sense of humor.
Despite all this, some performers grow, instead of swelling. Take for instance, the case of Paul Muni, who is just about the most thorough actor in this business. Year after year, Muni has added to his professional prestige and retained his personal integrity. Muni and his
wife have accomplished the exceedingly difficult latter task by refusing to be sucked into the social life of Hollywood. Mrs. Muni has not entered into a race with other wives in the matter of jewelry, furs, cars or mansions. It is a rare occasion indeed when you see them in a Hollywood night club or at a party. They live twenty miles from Hollywood, on the shores of the Pacific at Palos Verdes, and they achieve a dignity of home life that preserves a sense of proportion.
Clark Gable, the No. 1 hero of the screen, has much the same instinct for personal privacy and detachment from Hollywood's merry-go-round that distinguishes Muni. In twelve months out here, I saw Gable and Carole Lombard at a night club just once. That was the night of the benefit for the widow of Ted Healy, at which they appeared, and, following it, Gable and Carole showed up at the Clover Club for several hours. They seemed to be having a grand time, too. They sat alone, danced together and left the place hand in hand. Gable, in the course of ten years, has grown steadily — he has grown in acting ability, in popularity and in the development of a fine sense of self-humor that adds to his likability. It is Gable who kids about his ears, about "Parnell," and about his he-man reputation.
Yet Gable never sacrifices his dignity. He can be pleasant without putting on a prop smile that some of the youngsters exhibit so continuously that they wear you down. Gable won't let an exhibitionist use him as a target, just to prove that he is good-natured. Within bounds, he is genial. When pests go beyond those bounds, he can freeze up very swiftly and very effectively. In other words, he acts the way you expect a normal person to act.
There are few completely normal people in Hollywood. Exposed to abnormal publicity, it is little wonder that a lot of them begin to believe their press clippings. Don Ameche, for instance, has received so much publicity on his laugh that I imagine an unconscious act has become a very conscious part of his equipment. Fay Bainter has been given so much publicity because of her mobile eyebrows I imagine she is embarrassed now every time she lifts them. Zasu Pitts probably would like to put her hands in her pocket, but, until the end of time, she must flutter them to satisfy a public that [Continued tinned on page 69]
Edward G. Robinson is eagerly interested in other things besides himself.
The career of Adolphe Menjou goes on aided by a genuine personal liking.
for February 1939
19