April 15, 1932

MARY NOLAN SAYS ASSETS 15 CENTS

Los Angeles, April 15 (UP)
The total assets of Mary Nolan, motion picture actress, and her husband, Wallace T. McCreary, Jr., are 15 cents in cash, they told a municipal court referee when brought in on bench warrants for examination as judgment debtors. They said they have been living on the charity of friends.




ACTRESS IS SUED FOR HOTEL’S MILK

Los Angeles, April 15, (UP)
Fritzi Ridgeway, actress, failed to pay $860 due for milk furnished her at Hotel Tahquitz, a suit on file to-day alleged.




FAIRBANKS AIDE WEDS TAHITIAN

Los Angeles, April 15 (UP)
A romance of the South Seas that budded and blossomed under tropical Kleig lights became known to-day in a letter received at Douglas Fairbanks’ office telling of the marriage of Walter Pahlman, chief of Fairbanks’ technical staff, to Simone Terai, a Polynesian girl.

Fairbanks, who, with company which accompanied him to the South Seas to film motion pictures, halted production two days the early part of April to celebrate the wedding of Pahlman and Miss Terai, which in English means “grand.”

The marriage, performed in true native fashion in the Tairiroo district, on the island of Tahiti, was attended by 500 Polynesians, the letter said. Fairbanks presented Pahlman and his bride with a phonograph, which the motion picture actor said was “enjoyed more by Simone’s relatives than by the bride.”

Pahlman and his wife are en route with Fairbanks to San Francisco, where they will arrive May 7.




SIX MONTHS STAY FOR GARBO

Hollywood, Calif., April 15
Greta Garbo has been granted a six months extension on her United States Immigration Bureau permit, which will allow her to remain here until January.


From Luella O. Parsons:



Try to find Joan Crawford for the next two weeks. She has finished her last picture and she is taking a vacation and where she’s going only two or three people know, and they’re not telling. When Joan returns, she will be handed “The Education of a Princess” to read. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer has bought the screen rights to this interesting story by Grand Duchess Maria of Russia and we are told it’s for Joan.

Her imperial highness, the author, is well known and liked in Hollywood. She hasn’t let the tragedies of her life, and they have been many, affect her sense of humor.
Ansel Wichfeld, who sold M-G-M the grand duchess’ first book, is in Hollywood now, transacting business and selling other plays and novels.




For the second time within the last few months James Cagney is mad at Warner Brothers. Mr. Cagney’s spells of refusing to play usually can be cured by a raise in salary.

The last time he absented himself from the studio he came back when Darryl Zanuck doubled his salary. Today Mr. Zanuck received a wire saying “Very sorry, I cannot be on the coast Monday for ‘Blessed Event.” This, with a previous intimation that a little more money was needed to make Mr. Cagney happy, caused the organization to assemble for a hurried conference.

If Mr. Cagney is raised again what then? Will he, in a few months, take leave just when he is about to make a picture? “Blessed Event” was to have gone into production Monday but now that Mr. Cagney is not available it will be held up until Mary Brian can be brought from the East for the leading feminine role.




“Laughing Boy” with Lew Ayres is held up pending the selection of a leading lady. Carl Laemmle, Jr. is appealing for suggestions for the role of “Slim Girl.” So far so good, but please remember suggestions must be sent to Mr. Laemmle at Universal City and not to this office.

The girl is young, slim and with more than just a pretty face. While junior is pondering over the difficulties of getting the right girl for the part, United Artists are conferring on another little plan. Arthur Kelly, head of foreign distribution, believes if Al Jolson will sing in French and German in his United Artists picture, “Happy Go Lucky” will have an enormous sale abroad.




Splendid notices were received on Mae Marsh’s work as the mother in “Over the Hill,” but the picture is so saccharine that the critics’ lamentations centered on the poor story rather than on anyone’s work. Edward Tinker, Richard Rowland and Al Rockett have wisely overlooked all else but the really great characterization given by Mae and they are putting her in “Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm.”

In her second talkie, “Little Sister” of “Birth of a Nation” fame also plays an older woman. She is slated for Aunt Jane while Louise Closser Hale plays Aunt Miranda. The whole company leaves for Santa Cruz on location – and in that merry little party besides the two aunts, are Marian Nixon, Ralph Bellamy, Sarah Padden, Allan Hale, Eula Grey and Harry Beresford.




A sea story is next on the program for Columbia. A thriller called “The Thirteenth Man,” by Elmer Clauson, is Harry Cohn’s choice for Jack Holt. Walter Wanger, who is now in New York interviewing authors and attending to Columbia business at that end, also read the story which features a sailor. From past experience we know that the majority of men should like this, for Joseph Conrad’s seas stories are popular with the male sex who care little for frills and furbelows in their movies. Howard Higgin will direct.


Snapshots of Hollywood:



Walter Huston is building a new home for his bride in the San Bernardino Mountains.




John Miljan telling a few cronies that his wife is awaiting a visit from the stork.




Vivienne Osborne is fighting the demon flu.




Claudette Colbert and Norman Foster selecting flowers and giving the clerk a thrill when they took his suggestions.




Thelma Todd, one of Hollywood’s prettiest blondes, was at the Brown Derby escorted by two men friends. Constance Cummings, in green, at the same place.



From Wood Soanes:

After various excursions into the realms of higher screen art with varying results, The Screen Guild, planned as comparable to the Theater Guild in New York, has been projected in Hollywood under the sponsorship of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

M. C. Levee, president of the academy, is named as the originator of the plan which is described as “one of the most constructive movements for combining and organizing on a practical and equitable participating basis, the best creative and business forces for the making of higher quality screen plays for public consumption.”

Something of this sort was planned with the formation of United Artists, but that studio eventually developed into an out-and-out commercial enterprise useful and unique only to the extent that it permitted individual stars to do the things they liked to do and to gain profit by their good judgment or errors.

Since there is nothing definite in the announcements of the Screen Guild, it will be for the future to decide its place. The first production has not yet been determined but Levee would like very much to do a picture with the three Barrymores, borrowing John and Lionel from M-G-M and Ethel from the theater for a single production.
That there is a need for an institution of this sort goes without saying, but its likelihood of success depends upon a number of items that must be settled before it is launched.



Hollywood has made pictures before this that were artistic in form and production. It wasn’t so long ago that M-G-M produced “The Guardsman” with the Lunts, but the fact that the story was sophisticated and the Lunts unknown to movie audiences limited the scope of the picture. “The Sin of Madelon Claudet” with Helen Hayes had a similar fate.

This will be the first problem of the Screen Guild. There isn’t much profit in superior pictures, if those pictures are not booked; and, from local managers’ viewpoint, there isn’t much profit in playing pictures with appeal only to the intellectuals in the theaters that depend upon volume of trade for their existence. Perhaps Levee has some system of underwriting the pictures in his mind. This would seem to be the only solution.



The promoters of the scheme are enthusiastic, however, and Harry D. Wilson, the publicity director, views it with the assurance of success.

“Every great upward step taken by the films has been during a depression,” Wilson
writes. “This is traced back as far as 1893, when, in that poor business period, the late Thomas A. Edison’s Kinescope or the ‘peep show’ was first put on the market, quickly followed by the mutiscope, later the biograph; they spread everywhere.

“In the 1907-08 depression, motion picture store shows known as nickelodeons, increased so rapidly that the motion picture theater may be said to have become established. The years 1912-13, another depression period, saw the advent of longer films and the entrance of the theatrical element into the business.

Reference is also made to the advancement of the American motion picture during the depression of 1921-22. All of which brings us to the present time of a low business barometer calling for a readjustment in methods of production that may very well result in another great step in advance.

The Hollywood film colony is tremendously interested in the announcement of the Guild’s formation. It will help the industry, its artists and the public alike, for it fills a recognized gap in the motion picture business through which the latest available creative and business forces for the making of higher quality motion pictures for the screens of the world will become a reality.”




Word is relayed from Hollywood by Santa Cruz that Janet Gaynor has turned down “Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm” because “the critics were not too kind to her in ‘Daddy Long Legs’ and she objects to playing a little girl part in the new picture.” The part goes to Marian Nixon.

It seems that Miss Gaynor got better notices in “Daddy Long Legs” than she received in any other picture in recent years, and certainly the picture did more business than her previous releases since “Seventh Heaven.” There must be some other reason. The picture, incidentally, is to be made in Santa Cruz.




Kay Francis’ picture, “A Dangerous Brunette,” now bears the title “Man Wanted,” and she has gone to work on “The Jewel Robbery.” “Man Wanted” will be released late this month.




“Dr. X,” the new First National mystery, is to have the distinction of being made in color, if that is a distinction. Fay Wray will be opposite Lionel Atwill in the chief role.




Discovered while playing in a Philadelphia stock company, Diane Sinclair, nineteen and a brunette, has been signed by M-G-M. Born in Dutch Guiana of French and Dutch parentage, she was adopted by an American family and reared here.




STUDIOS BID FOR SERVICES OF THURSTON

Metro Would Team the Magician With Jackie Cooper

By Chester B. Bahn

Last minute Rialto news –
Howard Thurston’s talkie bow impends; M-G-M, Radio and Paramount are bidding for his services… The chances at present favor M-G-M which contemplates co-starring the magician and Jackie Cooper in an autobiographical story by Thurston…

Helen Charleston will replace Mary Brian in Ken Murray’s vaudeville turn…

The Four Mills Brothers, Paramount-bound, may be seen with Bing Crosby in “Wild Waves;” production starts in June…

Regis Toomey anticipates a Broadway legit appearance ere he returns to Hollywood…

Refusing Paramount’s $36,000 offer for the talkie rights, A. C. Blumenthal may picturize “Child of Manhattan” independently…

Fearful of fan reaction to a flood of screen satire, producers are toning down “exposes” in both political and Hollywood story cycles…




Marion Davies wants Clark Gable opposite her in another picture, but M-G-M is reported cold to the suggestion…

“Grand Hotel” is expected to inspire a round of all-star productions, all major studios contributing…




Joseph I. Schultzer, former president of Radio Pictures, is bidding for the talkie rights to “The Song and Dance Man” as a vehicle for Hal Skelly…

Donald Ogden Stewart is the newest writer attempting to salvage “The March of Time,” M-G-M’s shelved revue…




Dickie Moore, between “Our Gang” comedies, will make three pictures for Bryan Foy.




Buster Keaton can’t seem to get along without Cliff Edwards. “Sidewalks of New York,” Keaton’s latest at the Riviera, is the third Keaton talkie in succession in which Edwards has been given a featured role. The previous two were “Dough Boys” and “Parlor, Bedroom and Bath.” On the same program, Tom Keane stars in “Partners.”




Jessie L. Lasky has signed Herbert Marshall, much-sought-after player in “There’s Always Juliet,” Broadway play, to work in Paramount pictures.




The Kay Francis starring picture for Warner Brothers, “Man Wanted,” is director William Dieterle’s third English-speaking picture.
Dieterle was brought to Hollywood to direct foreign language versions of Warner-First National pictures, but revealed such an unusual talent that he was transferred and given English pictures to direct. His first was the well-remembered “The Last Flight,” starring Richard Barthelmess, and his second was Marilyn Miller’s “Her Majesty, Love.”




Cary Grant, new Hollywood personality, who makes his screen debut in Paramount’s “This Is the Night,” asserts the biggest break he ever had was when he was fired by a London theater manager.
Grant, English-born and stage-trained in his native land, came to the United States several years ago to play leading roles on Broadway. His success won him an offer to return to London.
After the first performance the manager told the English actor that he would have to be replaced in the role, because he had become “too American” during his absence from London.
Grant caught the first boat back to New York and resumed his Broadway career that eventually led to Hollywood and a contract with Paramount.




Elocution lessons from Tyrone Powers’ wife, high school and Sunday School players, and of course in a New York dramatic school prepared Una Merkel for a theatrical career, which she began in silent pictures with Lillian Gish, after which she spent several years on the stage. Miss Merkel’s last picture is “The Impatient Maiden,” which stars Lew Ayres.


This that and t’other –



Edward G. Robinson declined to depart on that water location trip off the coast of Mexico, and so a camera crew will go instead for atmospheric footage; Robinson’s “tuna” fishing for “Tiger Shark” will be done off Catalina Island…

In return for Joan Crawford’s services, M-G-M gets a 40 per cent interest in United Artists’ “Rain”…




Marlene Dietrich rejected Flo Ziegfeld’s overtures for an appearance in a Broadway musical…

Radio’s “Truth About Hollywood” becomes “Hollywood Merry-Go-Round”…

Fox has signed Arthur Pierson, stage actor, dropped by Paramount…

Cecil B. De Mille will direct “Sign of the Cross” for Paramount, but will have nothing to do with the talkie version of “The Ten Commandments.” Paramount, however, may salvage some of the original De Mille spectacle footage for the latter…




Radio will not act upon its “Life of Virgie Winters” option until Jane Murfin completes a suggested script; Ann Harding is the star in mind for Louis Bromfield’s heroine…




Paramount is revising the script of “Love Me Tonight,” to give Maurice Chevalier greater opportunity.

I hear that –



Eric Linden and Arlene Judge, both in “Young Bride,” as well as Bob Armstrong, will support Edna May Oliver in “The Penguin Pool Murder”…

Joel McCrea will be seen in “Ace Wonder,” written by the late Edgar Wallace and Merian C. Cooper…

Alec Woollcott may go talkie in Columbia’s “Brief Moment” which will star Barbara Stanwyck, probably with Scott Kolk of the stage cast opposite.




Now she’s director! But don’t take this to mean that Ruth Chatterton has given up acting. She’s simply improving her time between pictures by coaching her husband, Ralph Forbes, in a new stage play soon to be presented in Hollywood.




TARZAN, APE MAN, WILL BE AT FOX THEATER

Tomorrow, at noon, the Fox theater will present “Tarzan the Ape Man.”
Entirely new and thrilling is the film version of the famous Edgar Rice Burroughs Tarzan adventures. Johnny Weissmuller, swimming champion, plays the title role in “Tarzan the Ape Man.”

Tarzan is first seen in African jungles where he lives in the trees with the giant apes as though he were one of them. A safari headed by two white men and a white girl press through the jungle wilderness, in search of the mythical elephants burial ground, with its tons of ivory treasure worth thousands of dollars. When Tarzan sees the girl, knowing only the laws of the jungle to take what he wants, he steals her for his mate.

The story is as convincing as it is thrill-packed, and the combats with the lions, the desperate struggle of the expedition to cross a river infested with alligators, the elephant stampede of a pigmie village and many more incidents caught by the camera at close range, make “Tarzan the Ape Man” exciting entertainment from start to finish.

C. Aubrey Smith, Maureen O’Sullivan, and Neil Hamilton are seen as the three white who lead the African expedition.




SIN’S PAY DAY OPENS AT RIALTO

The first local showing of “Sin’s Pay Day” opens today at the Rialto for a two-day showing.

The action deals with the fall of a brilliant criminal lawyer and his rise due to the efforts of a ragged urchin who befriends him in time of need.

The leading roles are played by Dorothy Revier, Forrest Stanley and Mickey (Himself) McGuire, child star.

Seven selected features are part of the program. News events, cartoon, two-act comedies, travelogue and several novelty subjects are included.