March 10, 1932

BEERY IS DAD NOW

Los Angeles, March 10
Wallace Beery, noted film star, is now legally a father.
But although according to law he only has an 18-months-old daughter, his household actually contains three children.
The legal daughter is Carol Ann Priester, whom he and his wife, Rita Gillman Beery, adopted this week. And the other youngsters are Carol’s brothers, George, 9, and William, 4.
The children are motherless since the death of Mrs. Juanita Priester, Mrs. Beery’s aunt.
And so the Beerys, who have often declared a wish for a houseful of children, took the three youngsters in, with the full consent of their father, and are planning to rear them.



SELZNICK AND WIFE AWAIT AUGUST HEIR

Hollywood, March 10 (INS)
An heir will arrive in the family of Mr. and Mrs. David Selznick in August, they announced today. Mrs. Selznick was formerly Irene Mayer, daughter of Louis B. Mayer, head of a motion picture company. Selznick is executive vice president in charge of production at another studio.




ACTOR TO ADOPT DOROTHY DARLING

Hollywood, March 10 (INS)
Roscoe Ates, stuttering film comedian, today had taken legal steps to adopt his stepdaughter, Dorothy Marcella Adrian, 18, known on the screen and stage as Dorothy Darling. Mrs. Ates and Ates were married 12 years ago when she was Clara Adrian, vaudeville favorite.




ACTRESS TO REST AFTER OPERATION

Hollywood, March 10 (INS)
Arletta Duncan, film actress, planned today to leave soon for her home in New Orleans to recover from a tonsillectomy.





VETERAN ACTRESS WINS STARDOM

Hollywood, March 9 (INS)
Mary Boland, veteran character actress of the screen, today was elevated to stardom and will play the featured role in a motion picture. Clive Brook may be the leading man.


From Luella O. Parsons:



You will be seeing Edna May Oliver often this coming year. A campaign is to be waged by Radio to try and win for her the popularity that the one and only Marie Dressler enjoys throughout the country.
Miss Oliver is an expert comedienne, and during the brief year she has been on the screen she has been building a place for herself. With the right picture, who knows what she may do? Her first picture under the David O. Selznick regime is “Hell Bent For Election,” a story written especially for her by S. J. Perlman.
Ralph Murray and Zion Myers are the directors – and we are advised to keep our eye on this one because it’s the first of a series of Oliver comedies that are to feature her.

Certainly it hasn’t hurt Buster Collier to cast his lot with the independents. He has had any number of jobs while the actors who have only made pictures with the big companies have often been looking for work. Buster is now the lead in Emory Johnson’s picture, “Phantom Express,” slated for educational release. That reminds me that Lina Basquette had no more than stepped her foot off the train than she was signed pronto opposite Buster. Lina has been vaudevilling for months and now she is back again to give the movies another try.
A great cast has been selected for “Phantom Express,” pretty Sally Blane, J. Farrell MacDonald, Hobart Bosworth, Allen Forrest, (I haven’t heard of him in ages) Tom O’Brien, Eddie Phillips, and David Rollins.




Heard and overheard: Joan Crawford and Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. are planning to get away in June for that trip to Europe. Just how it can be arranged I don’t know, except that Joan has finished “Letty Lynton” and she immediately starts “Promiscuous.” Doug Jr. is also making two pictures in succession for Warner Brothers so that he can be ready to leave with his wife.




You just have to hand it to that girl Marie Prevost. She has taken pounds and pounds off and yesterday she refused a job because she didn’t think she was thin enough. She has made a vow that she won’t make a picture until she has lost another five pounds.

Evalyn Knapp and Hardie Albright, both in the new Arliss picture, spent Sunday at Palm Springs. They chartered a plane and took the air together.

The Thelma Todd and Austin Parker romance is getting more and more attention in the film colony

From Wood Soanes:

Ivan Lebedeff, who has been having his ideas on how his career should progress at Radio, has been taken out of “Girl Crazy.” The picture is now being remade with Brooks Benedict, a free lance player, taking over the role.




Marilyn Miller, released by Warner’s after “Her Majesty Love,” and now in litigation over the contract, has been engaged by Max Gordon for a summer revue. Gilda Gray, also, is in the theatrical lineup, having signed for a short vaudeville season.


“Love Is a Racket,” the Rian James novel, is to be done on the screen with Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. as the Broadway columnist instead of Richard Barthelmess. The latter returns from the Orient to start work on “The Cabin in the Cotton.”
Meantime, James has written a new novel, “Hat Check Girl,” which could be used by Nancy Carroll, Joan Blondell or even, in a pinch, Janet Gaynor.




Stuart Irwin is being mentioned for the name role in the talkie version of “Merton of the Movies,” originally done on the stage by Glenn Hunter. He later repeated the role for Paramount in a silent version.




CRAWFORD, GABLE ARE ON NATIONAL SCREEN

Joan Crawford and Clark Gable are featured at the National theater in “Possessed,” a story of a factory girl who, rebelling against an environment of drab poverty, ends up on Park Avenue to find out that wealth and happiness do not necessarily go hand in hand.
The plot is brought to a climax when the heroine, finding her affair with Gable stands in the way of his becoming governor of the state, makes a public confession of her past at a crowded political convention.
Supporting players include Wallace Ford and Skeets Gallagher.




“After Tomorrow,” film version of the John Golden and Hugh Stange stage success of the same name, opens its local engagement today at the Empire.
Charles Farrell and Marion Nixon are to be seen in the leading roles of the picture, as the romantic young sweethearts whose marriage is constantly frustrated by opposition of their sentimental and selfish mothers. Rather than to go against their parents’ wishes, they seek emotional relief in a blind trust of the future, that “After Tomorrow,” that promises to be bright.
Minna Gombell, as the mother of Miss Nixon, is said to give the greatest performance of her screen career in a characterization that calls for her to deny lover for her own daughter. This conflict arises from the fact that she is married to a weak and ineffectual husband, played by William Collier Sr., who has never been able to supply her with the pretties demanded by her vanity.
As Farrell’s mother, Josephine Hull brings to the drama the same role that she created on the New York stage.
In other important roles are William Pawley, Ferdinand Munier and Nora Lane.




“The Man Who Played God”

George Arliss is given an opportunity to add another fine portrait to his long list of screen portrayals with his role in “The Man Who Played God,” starting Friday. Arliss has been “Disraeli,” “The Green Goddess,” “Old English.” “The Millionaire,” and “Alexander Hamilton” for the talking screen. In his new picture, he is seen as a world-famous musician who goes deaf and tries to help others although his physical handicap keeps him from mingling with them directly. It is an old silent role of the stars, brought up-to-date and given new settings and a new cast. The cast includes Violet Heming, Bette Davis, Ivan Simpson and Louise Closser Hale. “The Man Who Played God” is adapted from a short story by Gouverneur Morris.