Silver Screen (May-Oct 1939)

62 Silver Screen for July 1939 Look for the "FINGERNAIL" bottle cap! DURA-GLOSS Noil Polish Select your nail polish this way — and get the exact color you want! Just look at the "fingernail" (patented ) on the Dura-Gloss bottle-cap — it's coated with the actual polish that's in that bottle — the color is the same as it will look on your own fingernails when dry and glossy! Don't be misled by the low price — compare Dura Gloss with polishes costing up to $1. See how long it stays lustrous on your nails, how easily it"goes on,"how fashion-right the colors are! Hundreds of thousands of women have switched to Dura-Gloss. Try it! At cosmetic counters, 10c. Also a 25c Profes>a4 sional package. \ DURA-GLOSS _J jaPf*) LABORATORIES Cwl^U PATERSON, N . J . Fate, Hope and Hilarity! [Continued from page 25] Besides his blackface and dancing, Hope sang in the quartette, doubled on saxophone and helped out with trunks and scenery when he was resting. Arbuckle liked the lads and helped them get a job with a small road show musical. When that closed they played vaudeville with a certain amount of success, until they successfully auditioned for "Sidewalks Of New York." When that show closed they went back into vaudeville, but Bob began to realize that a dancing act in vaudeville, unless it was sensational, never got you anywhere. The break came when they played Newcastle, Indiana. Bob was asked by the manager to go out and announce the following week's show. Instead of the bare announcement, Hope started telling Scotch jokes, the audience loved it, and before he bowed off he practically had a new act worked out. Bob worked out his new patter act in night clubs, neighborhood houses, stag parties and small time around Cleveland and Detroit until he thought it was right. Then he went to Chicago where no one would even give it a showing. In a few months he was living on the proverbial coffee and sinkers, $4,000 in debt and covering the holes in his shoes with cardboard, but he hung on grimly. Finally he booked a date in a small neighborhood house. By the second show he had a three-day booking in a larger theatre; a date that stretched into six months, and Hope was set. He toured Western Vaudeville, the old Interstate Circuit and finally hit New York. But by the time he hit New York he had a bankroll saved up and an inflexible determination that he was through playing theatres so small that the actors' heads bumped the balcony when they bowed. Steadfastly, he turned down all offers of second-rate theatres until he got an offer for the Eighty-Sixth Street Theatre in the coveted next-to-closing spot. That fixed him. By the end of the second show the bookers had seen the act and offers poured in, he signed a three year headlining contract with RKO and, during that trip over the circuit, made his first screen test for Pathe. That test was enough to convince him that pictures were not for Hope. Meanwhile, he was doing all right in vaudeville, musical comedy and radio. He appeared in the ill-fated "Ballyhoo," the hit, "Roberta," "Ziegfeld Follies" and "Red Hot and Blue." It was during "Roberta" that he loaned Fred MacMurray, then tootling a sax in the show's band, his hat and cane, and Bob claims that he finally had to come to Hollywood to retrieve his property. It was "The Big Broadcast of 1938" that marked Hope's debut in pictures, and his movie career has progressed in leaps and bounds ever since. While playing in "Roberta" Bob met Dolores Reade, a night club singer, and Bob heckled her continually, to the point of following her to Miami, Florida, until she married him. Their place at Toluca . s Lake is usually filled with people, and one of Bob's most prolific sources of gags are his guests and their eating propensities. He'll describe in great detail how they devour every scrap of food in the house, and the teeth imprints he found on the icebox door, but he really loves, it. His idea of fun is sitting around with friends, trying to "top" the gags that fly back and forth. Much of his materia! is suggested this way. When not at home or the studio he can usually be found at the golf links neat his home where he shoots a good game in the seventies. He lost the club champion ship to Bing Crosby not long ago. Hope has the faculty of never seeming to work, but yet getting out a terrific amount. Besides his movie work he has his weekly radio program and frequent vaudeville appearances. But rehearsals for his radio show — usually a strain to most comics — are yanked into the fun category by Hope. Working over gags and situations with his script writers becomes merely another story-swapping session just like the old days when actors woul^ sit around and kid back and forth with the stage crew. If there's any of the Hamlet that's supposed to lurk behind every comedian' smiling face, Bob Hope manages to kee it well submerged. He's famous for his lightheartedness, and never seems to have a care in the world. When he's not working or golfing he's as often as not fooling with his camera hobby; he owns a Leica, a Graflex and a sixteen millimetre movie; outfit. None of his work seems onerous to! him, and no audience, on stage, screen or radio, can be as tough as one he encountered early in his career. When he first started in show business, Bob tells, his brother was working in a machineryfactory. Brother bragged about his "professional" brother and so Bob was asked to perform at the company's annual employees' party. The party started around two in the afternoon, held in the huge factory building. Barrels of beer were drained, and one entertainment feature after another went on so that it was evening before Hope was called upon for his turn. By that time most of the employees were a little glassy-eyed, and kids were crying. On top of that, the factory had been constructed to deaden noise — and it was to this solemn, beery, noisy audience that youi Hope started his act. He told jokes, sani danced and went into his patter. And t< ail this he received only stony star while his brother went off into a corne and died of embarrassment. "After that, Bob says, "nothing could be tough. Ant my brother wouldn't speak to me for years." And right now nothing seems to be very tough for Hope. He's making plenty of pictures and money (we hope) on the coast, and then his radio activities are not to be sneezed at either. And you'd be surprised the number of Broadway producers who'd like Bob to return East for stage appearances.