A GERMAN VIEW

Upon returning to Europe after an engagement of several months in Hollywood, Lil Dagover, the well-known German screen actress, hastened to add her contribution to the tales about “hardships” being endured by the greater and lesser lights of the film metropolis since the motion pictures learned to talk. In an interview printed in the Neue Freie Presse of Vienna, Frau Daugover is quoted as saying:

“Things have changed a great deal in Hollywood in the five years since my previous visit there. Most of the stars of the silent films have faded out and those who have been able to hold their places have modified their demands and views materially. The snobbishness of the old days has vanished. Today it is just a question of work; not, 'I must have an expensive car because I am the irreplaceable diva.' Competition by the actors from the theatre, many of whom are brought from the North, is the main reason for the altered conditions.

“Hollywood has ceased to be a paradise, for today even the work itself if no longer a pleasure. Extreme concentration of will-power is needed in order to be able to endure the activities, which always begin at 9 o'clock in the morning and often continue until 3 o'clock the next morning. Of course this is bad for the social life. Only once did I have occasion to meet all the big figures of the film metropolis – at the Mayfair Ball, which I attended in company with the family of Oscar Straus, the composer,”

Frau Dagover told her interviewer that she had just signed a contract for a talking part in the operetta “Teufelsreiter.”




Anna Sten, the Russian actress who supported Emil Jannings in “Tempest” and who appeared in the German version of “The Brothers Karamazov,” has been engaged by Samuel Goldwyn for United Artists. Miss Sten was born at Kiev of a Russian father and a Swedish mother. At the age of 15 she was admitted to the Russian Film Academy and later played in one of the Stanislavsky Art companies, appearing in Pirandello plays and works by Ibsen and Maeterlinck. She became interested in motion picture work, however, and she returned to the screen in a number of Russian films, including “The Yellow Pass.” She expects to leave Paris for Hollywood about the middle of next month.