Talking Screen (Sep-Oct 1930)

you will find the players earnestly preparing for the day when Jesse Lasky, Carl Laemmle, Jack Warner or one of the other magnates may be saying: "Big girl (or boy), you are putting too much emphasis on the big. You're twenty pounds overweight now and you can't have that lead. And that's that!" The private business enterprises into which screen capital is being invested are getting more diversified every day and the amount of dollars invested is increasing proportionately. From ventures as unromantic as owning a hog farm or running a sawmill, these diversions run the gamut of raising grapes and specializing in highly-bred cows! CHARLES BICKFORD, Greta Garbo's boy friend in Anna Christie, is the individual who decided that while it might not be romantic or sentimental to raise hogs, it was at least extremely profitable. So Charles sank a carload of his money into a hog ranch up Massachusetts way. His ranch manager breeds porkers and sells something like four thousand yearly. Bickford, by the way, has all sorts of enterprises supervised by capable managers who save him loads of money. He owns three whaling vessels that ply their down-to-the-sea-in-ships trade with an efficiency that shows lucrative results. He owns a restaurant, where ham can have eggs or eggs can have ham, or duo. He owns four gas filling stations around town. Between pictures, he goes around and casts an eagle eye over this and that. If he likes this and that and provided it's for sale. Who takes care of the players^ salaries — and why most of them won't have to worry ivhen their studio pay checks stop coming around Ruth Roland goes in for real estate, and she owns a good deal of property in Los Angeles. Her manager, incidentally, is L. E. Kent, her first husband. INCOMES All of Harold Lloyd's personal and business affairs are handled by his uncle, William R. Fraser, shown at leisure here with the star. he buys it. For instance, he spotted a filling station on Main street in Los Angeles. It was brokendown and living mostly on air. Bickford consulted his business manager and then bought it. It now pays him a thousand a month net profit, more than many a player's screen salary. He recently purchased a half-interest in a business that rents all kinds of animals to the studios. To top it all, he does a bit of writing whenever he gets a chance. He wrote the Lenore Ulric stage effort. The Sandy Hooker, and has a second play tightening itself together in the ""sticks" ere venturing into Manhattan. Enterprising young fellow — this Charlie! EDMUND LOWE is an enthusiastic follower of ranch operations. He has 1200 acres in the Santa Cruz Mountains, near San Jose. Grapes are the main crop and if prohibition is ever abolished, a certain Mr. Eddie Lowe sees in his land a new kind of liquid gold. As it is, Ed's ranch manager saves him a good bunch of money yearly. Sometimes, when Ed and his wife, Lilyan Tashman, have a bit of leisure time, they journey up to the ranch and help look after the crops themselves. Gary Cooper, who for years rode the Montana range, is another who goes in for ranches. Judge Cooper, Gary's father, acts as his famous son's financial manager and when he advised him to start a dude ranch in Montana, Gary wholeheartedly started right in. For some time now, he has been using a large portion of his salary paying out on the 7600 acres near Gary, Montana, his birthplace. So well is the scheme working that he has option on a holding almost as large in Arizona. Gary combines cattle raising with riding herd on an annual crop of eastern dudes. The price on beef may be not always the best, but the dudes, through careful examination of their financial standing before they are permitted to register, can always pay — and make no mistake, they do pay and handsomely, too ! 10UISE DRESSER owns a large garage on Sunset Boulevard y that saves her a tidy amount of greenbacks. Jack \ Continued on page 93} 69