BEHIND THE SCENES IN HOLLYWOOD

By Harrison Carroll

Hollywood, Cal., April 23, 1932
Now it comes out why R-K-O wouldn’t hear of Irene Dunne signing up with Mr. Ziegfeld.

She is to play the lead in “Nurse Smith,” a screen original by one of Hollywood’s veteran scenarists, Carey Wilson. Around the studio they are particularly keen on the story, which is about the pretty assistant of a fashionable baby doctor.

There’s a romance with a married man (his wife’s an unpleasant person, of course,) a renunciation episode and, to top it off, the happy ending so much desired by screen fans.

In all probability, “Nurse Smith” will go into production as soon as the star finishes her Universal engagement in “Back Streets.” At most, she will be given a short vacation.




NO ANSWER

Al Cohn loves to recall the squelch that Big Boy Williams gave to Spencer Tracy.

Spencer was showing off the stills from the new Flagg and Quirt picture in which he and Ralph Bellamy snarl at each other.

Big Boy considered them calmly.

“Skippy and Sooky, huh?” he flipped.




HERE’S LOWDOWN GOSSIP

A person who might know tells me that Greta Garbo wants to produce two pictures on her own, one of them “Salome.”

Remember the Nazimova version? It cost her thousands and she never got them back.


The Marx Brothers’ picture will take a six-week layoff due to Chico’s fractured knee-cap. There remains about two weeks’ work on the film, but this includes a rough-and-tumble football game. During the layoff, director Norman McLeod and his wife will go east. They may take a quick trip to Europe.




Ran across Bebe Daniels lunching with Ben Lyon at Fox. Bebe is now reading the sixth script submitted her by Warners. Chances are she’ll turn it down. In this event Warners have the right to pick any story they want. Bebe has only one more picture there. She and Ben may still appear on the coast in “There’s Always Juliet.”


George O’Brien, Cecilia Parker, director Dave Howard and the rest of “The Killer” troupe left for Arizona yesterday. They’ll live in a town perched on a hillside.


Joan Marsh has her blonde hair all fuzzed for her new picture.


Helen Twelvetrees’ mother, Mrs. William Jurgens, is out here from New York for a month’s visit.




Gwili Andre, R-K-O’s latest charmer and one of the prettiest girls to reach Hollywood in a long time, always lunches alone.


Martha Sleeper and Randolph Scott are making eyes at each other these days.




JOB FOR MARGUERITE

Marguerite Churchill has been in town only a few days, but she’s already landed a job. Paramount expects to sign her today to play the feminine lead in the new version of “The Ten Commandments.” This is the role that Sidney Fox was to have had if Universal hadn’t asked so much money for her.

There are several interesting features to this picture. Three reels of the original version – The Biblical sequence – will be retained in the talkie. They will contain no dialogue, of course, but sound effects will be added. The remaining reels will have a modern Russian background. Gene Raymond and Marguerite play the sympathetic leads. Sari Maritza is the vamp and Irving Pichel, Dwight Frye and Harry Beresford have character parts.

The picture will have two directors, Louis Glasnier and William H. Schorr.

Report has it that Paramount paid De Mille $50,000 for the right to use the Biblical sequence.


DID YOU KNOW

That Ann Harding made her stage debut as Shylock in “The Merchant of Venice”? The production was at a girls’ school.