February 29, 1932

From Luella O. Parsons:

Los Angeles, Feb. 29
Roscoe Arbuckle will test the public feeling by appearing in a sketch in Pantages Theater in Hollywood next week. If the reaction is what all his friends hope and believe, he will then make a motion picture and take it out in twenty key cities in a personal appearance tour. Certainly, there is no one cruel enough to put a stone in the way of Arbuckle’s comeback. He has been punished tenfold. A jury exonerated him, they why should anyone else try to act as his judge?
Certain organizations throughout the country have had their say about keeping him off the screen for many years. If now he can amuse and entertain the American public in the same type of clean comedies he made years ago, why shouldn’t he have the chance? Even the most hardened criminal is forgiven, and “Fatty” Arbuckle is no criminal.




I reckon Irene Dunne’s makeup in Cimarron did it. At any rate, after a month’s meditation, Universal decided that Genevieve Tobin is not the type to play the lead in Back Streets.
You see, so much depends on the makeup in the old sequence. Irene Dunne did the old age parts so beautifully in Cimarron she has been borrowed from Radio Pictures.
I imagine that Carl Laemmle, Jr. made the transaction over the long distance telephone, for he and his father, Carl Laemmle, Sr. are now in New York.

Walter Wanger is bringing a well-known authority on Washington politics with him when he reaches Hollywood. He will lend his valuable aid (the Washington authority, I mean,) to Merry Go Round. And just between us, I am wondering what Columbia can do with the spicy Merry Go Round, which is more or less a series of narratives.



OWNING LIQUOR NO JOKE FOR COMEDIAN

Los Angeles, Feb. 29 (UP)
Eddie Gribbon, film comedian and his wife, Loretta, were convicted in municipal court today of possession of liquor. Police raided the Gribbon home February 3 and said they confiscated several bottles of liquor. Gribbon and his wife will be sentenced tomorrow. They were acquitted of charges of intoxication.

CHINESE BID FOR HOLLYWOOD FLIERS

Hollywood, Feb. 29 (UP)
Motion Picture daredevils of the air who have done dangerous stunts and dodged make-believe bullets before the camera, have been given an opportunity for real flying with the Chinese forces.
Bob Demster, stunt flier, revealed today the Chinese had offered him and other aviators six months’ pay, deposited in advance, and a round trip ticket to Shanghai for services in the current conflict. Several of the fliers, it was reported, are considering the offer seriously.




BAXTER-LEILA HYAMS IN FOX-GRAND FILM

Warner Baxter and Leila Hyams will be seen in “Surrender,” for a three days’ engagement at the Fox Grand theater.
Jack Souders and the Merrymakers band will be on the three-day program. They will offer novelty, classical and popular numbers for the entertainment of all music lovers, and a singer will be featured in two of the numbers.
“Surrender” tells the story of a man and a woman madly in love with one another, but unable to be engaged because of a bitter racial hatred. Ralph Bellamy, Alexander Kirkland and C. Aubrey Smith head the supporting cast.
Next Thursday, “This Reckless Age” will be the feature attraction, with a big state show, for a four-days’ engagement.



NORMANDS JEWELS BRING SMALL PRICE

Mabel Normand’s beautiful collection of jewelry, once valued at $100,000, has been sold at auction for one-quarter of that amount. Rings, bracelets and unset diamonds valued at up to $10,000 each, were sold for $2500 and less. Very few picture people attended the sale, the majority of pieces being bought by dealers. The proceeds of the sale went to Miss Normand’s mother.



TWO GOOD ROLES WAIT FOR DUNN

Two new leading roles await James Dunn when he arrives at the Fox studios in Hollywood from his vaudeville tour of the Eastern cities.
The first of these is in “Little Teacher,” with Marian Nixon, who acted opposite Charles Farrell in “After Tomorrow,” soon to be released.
Following “Little Teacher,” Dunn will act in “Society Girl” from the play by John Larkin, Jr. It will be produced by Sidney Lanfield, who directed Dunn and Sally Eilers in their current romance, “Dance Team.”



ONLY EXTRA GIRL, BUT PAY IS GOOD

Hollywood, Feb. 29
She’s only an extra girl – but she earns in the neighborhood of $750 a week just the same.
That’s the record of Lillian Bond, auburn-haired actress who deserted Broadway when it was at her feet in order to try her luck in Hollywood.
But she isn’t an extra in theory – only in fact. Theoretically, Lillian is a Warner Brothers featured platyer. That’s what her contract says and that is why she gets such a large salary. But she is doing an extra girl’s work.
Now they want to break the contract, so they have assigned the very pretty young actress to extra parts, hoping she will do something that will give them an excuse to terminate the contract – this being house-cleaning time on the Warner-First National lot.



GARY COOPER BAGS LION IN AFRICA

Gary Cooper has killed two lions in the jungle near Naivasha, Africa, and is returning to civilization, according to a cable received in Hollywood by his father, Judge Charles Cooper. The message said the film star started by plane for Rome on Wednesday, February 10. He sails from Italy for London for a two week stay and will leave England for New York in March. From New York Cooper will go directly to Hollywood to resume his film work for Paramount.



GOVERNOR ROLPH CROWNS ANITA AT TAHOE

Tahoe City, Cal. Feb. 29 (Special)
Anita Page, golden haired screen star from Hollywood, was crowned “Queen of Winter” on a snowy white thrown among Tahoe’s woods yesterday morning with Gov. James Rolph, Jr. presiding at the coronation. The throne, erected near the toboggan slide with giant pines towering behind it, was surrounded by hundreds of cheering people as the governor, in regal robes of white befitting the character of King Winter, led Miss Page to the throne and placed the crown on her head after making a short talk.
The actress wore a flowing gown of white satin with high frilled cloak to harmonize, and walked to the throne from the royal sleigh supported by the governor.
Her reign as queen, however, lasted but two hours as she departed for San Francisco shortly after noon in company with Governor Rolph and his party.


The “unusual weather” of the current season has presented a new problem which has been met by the studios. In what are now referred to as “the good old days,” a company would plan on exterior location work a week in advance, knowing just what the weather would be. This year it has been impossible in the evening to know what would take place the next day, climatically.
As a result, Paramount has been working on an alternate schedule plan that has been taken up by other studios. Two schedules are prepared for each day’s work. Weather permitting, the companies go on location. If it is raining when the supervisor awakens in the morning, he phones the studio, and sets are made ready for work that day. Thus, all companies have been kept consistently at work.
Weather or no weather, Paramount has an average payroll in excess of 1,700 daily since the first of the year. This equals the daily average for both 1930 and 1931.

RKO has been notified that the location shots of “Bird of Paradise” taken in Hawaii have been completed and that the company will return within a few days. With “Strange interlude” at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, this is the most important production in work at the moment.



Again highlighting a career that is without parallel in a land of freakish fates, Henry B. Walthall has been signed for an important part in “Strange Interlude,” the Shearer-Gable film. Since the days of the Little Colonel in “Birth of a Nation,” Walthall has been up and down the ladder of fame. Sometimes he fades from sight completely, then bobs up in some production, then is lifted to prominence by a major company, only to disappear again later.
The things that have happened to him would have meant the professional death of a hundred other players, but his seems a charmed life. His current part attests this, as M-G-M spares no expense or effort in making a Shearer picture.



The cycle of newspaper stories continues. Warners are shooting “the Famous Ferguson Case,” said to combine the Ruth Snyder-Hall-Mills cases. So much press antagonism was created in a number of sources over “Five Star Final” that the studio sought newspaper protection in the current film. According to reports, Warners submitted a copy of the “Ferguson” script to a chain publisher also interested in the cinema to het his reaction and suggest changes so that the picture might avoid a duplication of “Five Star Final.”
Many stars are on the road augmenting their incomes. The average studio contract calls for forty weeks of work. Players receiving nominal salaries have found ready bookings in the important film houses, and in vaudeville, at double and treble their studio salaries.