April 2, 1932

COOPER, SCREEN ACTOR,
REFUSES $3 DANCE OFFER

New York, April 2 (Universal News Service)
Vicki Baum offered Gary Cooper $3 for a dance, and was turned down cold.

Miss Baum, author of Grand Hotel, admitted it freely when the liner Europa, with both the novelist and the film star aboard, arrived in port to-day.

Cooper, according to Miss Baum, sent back a firm refusal of her offer, explaining that $3 was not sufficient insurance against peril of life and limb by the rocking of the boat.

The tall movie idol brought back some fifty skins of game shot during his recent African hunting trip.

Miss Baum sighed:
“I like American men. They are so different, so boyish. I think I’ll become an American citizen.”




KALLA PASHA, EX-COMEDIAN, JAILED FOR NICKEL ROW

Movie Star of Mack Sennett Days, Broke, Vows to Swat All Motormen

Los Angeles, April 2 (UP)
Kalla Pasha, former boxer, wrestler and motion picture comedian, free-spending squire of noted actresses, who once carried $150,000 cash with him, was behind jail bars today as the result of an argument over five cents.

And, apparently, he didn’t regret it. Arrested on a charge of assault after assertedly breaking a bottle of “Kalla Pasha’s purple penetrating ink” over the head of H. F. Christopher, street car motorman, was quoted as saying:
“I’ll dedicate the rest of my life to assaulting motormen. I’ll leap from street car to street car swatting them on the ko-ko’s with bottles of Kalla Pasha’s purple penetrating ink.”

He had accused Christopher of short-changing him a nickel.
Now “broke,” Kalla Pasha boasted he used to take Norma Talmadge and Mabel Normand out “many an evening” wearing $150,000 strapped on his stomach and spending $100 bills freely.

He was in the movies for 21 years, at his height during the Mack Sennett bathing beauty days.




FILM DIRECTOR DIVORCED

Los Angeles, April 2 (AP)
Ralph Ince, film producer and director, and his wife, Lucille, known on the stage as Lucille Mendez, were divorced to-day on her complaint that he had injured her professional reputation by his refusal to permit her to accept theatrical engagements.




CLARA BOW’S SUCCESSOR AS REDHEAD FAVORITE IS POSSIBLY GINGER ROGERS

Hollywood, April 2 (Special – by Dan Thomas)
Reports to the contrary notwithstanding, our little girl friend Ginger Rogers isn’t all that her name implies. True, there is a lot of ginger in the little girl – flaming tresses, lots of pep and wisecracks galore – but they comprise only two thirds of this rapidly ascending actress. The other third is made up of the seriousness seldom found in girls of her type.

On the screen Ginger usually typifies the ultra modern 1940 model flapper. Nor are we surprised at that because she looks the part. She also looks the part in real life – at first glance. Study her closely however, and you will find that there is something above those sparkling eyes besides red hair.

In a crowd Ginger’s two-thirds majority comes to the fore. At such times she is always ready to make whoopee. Every wisecrack is met with a smarter one. And when it comes to dancing she can wear down any orchestra.

If there ever is to be a successor to Clara Bow – which there won’t – Ginger is the outstanding candidate. There never can be another Bow, just as there can’t be another Mary Pickford or Colleen Moore. However, Clara has vacated the throne as queen of the movie redheads and it is quite possible that Ginger may ascend to that throne.



And now Jean Harlow, famous for her platinum locks, is going to be a redhead.

It’s in the movies, of course, but movie fans who have wondered how Jean would looks sans the platinum hair will find out in “Red Headed Woman.”

Casting of Miss Harlow in this role is rather surprising when you realize that much of her present success is due to the fact that she is generally credited with being the original platinum blond and that she is given plenty of opportunities to show her platinum locks in all of her pictures




When a man gets a kick out of doing something he has been doing for fifteen years almost anything might happen. That’s what the gang around the Harold Lloyd set are saying these days. They really expect to see the impossible accomplished before “Movie Crazy,” Lloyd’s current comedy, is completed. And the reason is that Harold seems to be enjoying his work so much. As a rule the comedian has been like a highly trained prize fighter when it came time to actually start filming a picture. He would be eager to get into action – yet fretful and sullen and jumpy.

“Movie Crazy,” a comedy on Hollywood, also will be the most romantic film ever turned out by Lloyd. Of course, that is almost to be expected. When one deals with Hollywood, one naturally deals with love-making – whether it be synthetic or real. And young Constance Cummings who has been coming ahead so rapidly during the last year, is a perfect foil when it comes to that romantic business.




GABLE FEARS LUXURY EFFECT

Clark Gable is afraid that Hollywood is getting too comfortable for him, says a writer in Picture Play Magazine. She adds, “His fear of softening is not at all without foundation, although few persons not acquainted with all the facts realize his danger.”

Perhaps even Clark Gable himself doesn’t realize all of it.

His danger lies in the fact that he missed many things during his first thirty years of his life, and Hollywood is ready and willing to supply them. Hollywood is ready to give him luxury instead of poverty, relaxation instead of struggle.
Gable’s formula is dangerous toughness, thinly veneered with self-education and a bit of hastily acquired culture and polish. Soften the brutishness, thicken the veneer of culture, and you have a different Clark Gable. No one doubts that it is the screen idol’s rugged masculinity and sex-menace that has placed him at the top of the heap.

It took him thirty years to get that way. Battling youngsters around Pennsylvania mining towns when they poked fun at his big ears; the thing that grits in his speech was ground into him when he was kicked off a moving freight train; when heaving lumps of coal with older and tougher coal miners than himself, when his father called him a sissy for wanting to go on the stage rather than work in the oil fields.




WOMAN IS AHEAD AND LOVE NEXT

If any doubt exists that love still makes the world go ‘round it can be counteracted by a study of the titles selected from motion pictures. During the past seventeen years, 12,577 films have been released. In the titles of these, “love” and its two principal parts “man” and “woman” have appeared more frequently than any other words.
Statistics compiled by Fox Films from the pages of the Film Daily Yearbook for 1932, put “woman” in the lead. The word has been used 286 times. “Love” is second. It has appeared 255 times. “Man” with 222, is third. If words kindred to woman such as “girl,” “lady,” “daughter,” “mother,” “niece” or “her” are counted, the tally of the fairer sex is increased to 522. The derivatives of “man,” “father,” “son,” “boy” and so on have occurred only 335 times.

“Great” in its three degrees of comparison, comes next in frequency among title words. It has been utilized on sixty-nine occasions. “Danger,” with sixty-six, follows. “Devil” is in the select group, having been connected with sixty-one films. Elissa Landi’s current Fox picture, “Devil’s Lottery,” adds another to its total.




DORIS KENYON LIKES STAGE

Most movie players’ idea of really doing something is devoting part of their time to pictures, the rest to the stage.

Doris Kenyon is one of the few who is able to do this. In Hollywood now to play in “Young America” with Spencer Tracy, she is practicing daily for her concert tour which will start sometime this month in New York.

After singing for four weeks she will go back to Hollywood. Several months ago she was in two films and then went to sing in Europe.

Someone attempted to pay her a compliment by saying, “Your face is one that will not grow old. You’ll be in pictures for twenty years.”

“That,” commented Miss Kenyon, “was no compliment. I never want to be a character actress.

A few more pictures and then I shall give them up entirely for concert work.”




CARR TO MAKE WESTERN FILMS

Five de-luxe westerns, starring Bob Steele, will be produced by Trem Carr between now and July 1 for delivery to Educational under a deal just signed.

The first of the series will get under production shortly. It is titled “Riders of the West,” by R. N. Bradbury, who will direct it. The players in this will be Nancy Drexel, Ed Brady, Hank Bell, Charles West, Dick Dickinson, Earl Dwyer and Rose Plummer.

The other four selected stories are: “The Man from Hell’s Edge,” “Son of Oklahoma,” “Texas Buddies,” and “West of the Rockies.” Casts and directors have not been named yet.


From Luella O. Parsons:



To my certain knowledge Ruth Chatterton has read thirty-five plays and novels in a desperate effort to find a story. You would be surprised how few appropriate stories there are available. Yesterday Ruth and Darryl Zanuck okayed an unpublished novel called Children of Pleasure as the next Chatterton epic.

The galley proofs arrived by air mail and a check was in the mail in a few hours. That’s how quickly they reached their decision and how much they liked the story. Just entre nous the first Chatterton-Warner picture is said to be her best in many a day.

Children of Pleasure analyzes the modern woman and her change of standards. It’s by Larry Barretto, author of Indiscreet Years and Sunset.




Sh, sh, don’t dare breath a word but Sidney Franklin and Ernest Vajda are off in a cloud of smoke to New York. They have gone to the big town to take a look at Reunion in Vienna, which Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer will produce this coming season.

And here is another one. If Lynn Fontanne and Alfred Lunt can be talked out of playing in the picture, Norma Shearer will be starred in the Fontanne role.

Miss Fontanne has, it is whispered, insisted upon playing the role on the screen that she created on the stage. Well – she is a swell actress and enormously popular on stage, but much as I hate to say it, her popularity at the motion picture box office is not comparable with that of Miss Shearer.




The train speech of Jimmie (Schnozzle) Durante, the farewell Frank Borzage gave Sol Wurtzel, the dozens of flowers, the fruit and candy boxes carried aboard the train for Mrs. Jack Warner and Margaret Ettinger and Mrs. Durante, all contributed to one of the gayest leave-takings of the year.

The platform was filled with Fox, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and Warner Brothers folk, relatives, friends, etc., it looked like a young convention. Constance Cummings and another young lady were so absorbed in the festivities of the east-going choo choo they forgot to get off and were carried on to Pasadena. At the hour of going to press no one has learned whether the girls walked home or hitch hiked back to the village of Hollywood.


Snapshots of Hollywood:



Al Jolson, singing and singing and singing, long after closing time at Wonder Bar. Nary a soul leaving the theater.

Al is welcoming all of his motion picture friends with a royal greeting. The theater was filled with picture people who had been weekending when the play had its regular opening.

Joan Bennett was there with her bridegroom, Gene Markey. Joseph Schenck was hailed by Al as his boss and given a personal performance. Clara Bow in dark green coat, much plumper than I have seen her, in a front seat with her husband Rex Bell.

Claire Windsor, decked out in orchids in one act and gardenias in the other, smiling at her friends in the audience. Genevieve Tobin, in a light ensemble, was escorted by a good looking youth at the theater.




FORBIDDEN TO BE OPENER ON AMERICAN BILL

Barbara Stanwyck, Adolphe Menjou and Ralph Bellamy Play Lead Roles

Barbara Stanwyck will be seen in “Forbidden,” a Columbia drama. It is an original story, written and directed by Frank Capra.

Miss Stanwyck will be seen as the small town librarian who decides to squander her savings so that she might have a mad holiday. She commences by enjoying an ardent romance in Havana with Adolphe Menjou as her Romeo. A newspaper reporter, played by Ralph Bellamy, also falls in love with the girl. The two romances bring about a series of dramatic events which go to make “Forbidden” one of the most powerful stories of the political and press world yet screened.

On the supporting bill the American has arranged for a Mickey Mouse cartoon and other short reels which will be announced later.