Thursday, June 25, 2009

March 30, 1932



SCREEN ACTRESS DEFENDANT IN ALIENATION SUIT

Oakland, Cal. Mar. 30 (AP)
Claire Windsor, Hollywood motion picture beauty, to-day was accused of stealing the affections of Alfred C. Read, Jr., stock broker, in a suit filed by Mrs. Marian Y. Read, who asks $100,000 in damages.

In the complaint Mrs. Read charges her husband met Miss Windsor last September and “almost immediately began running around with her.” She accuses Miss Windsor of enticing him away from his home and that the actress associated with him in public. She declined to amplify the charges in the complaint.

“I could tell plenty,” she said, “but on advice of my attorney I can say nothing at this time. It’ll all come out in court.”

Meanwhile, in Los Angeles where she is appearing with Al Jolson in a stage performance, “Wonder Bar,” Miss Windsor was “flabbergasted, or floundered – or something” at the action because “she couldn’t understand why all this fuss was made about only knowing Mr. Read.”

She said Jolson’s manager introduced her to Read.

The suit against the actress was the second filed by Mrs. Read within a week. A few days ago she asked for a divorce from the broker, charging cruelty and that Read associated with other women. She is asking adequate alimony and custody of their two children, Alfred James, 2 years old, and Mary, 10 months. The Reads were married at a civil ceremony in 1927 and again at a Piedmont church wedding in 1928.





WEDDING PLANS GO ASTRAY

Hollywood, Cal., Mar. 30 (AP)
The scheduled wedding plans of Greta Nissen and Weldon Heyburn went astray to-day and so did the couple. The film players, who announced last night they would fly to Tijuana, Mexico to-day for a wedding, were not aboard the air line ship when it left a Glendale Airport this morning. Friends surmised they probably left Hollywood by automobile and would turn up husband and wife at some out-of-the-way point.

The couple’s romance began when the two met as members of the cast of “The Silent Witness,” a recent picture. One sequence called for Heyburn to choke the Norwegian actress. Miss Nissen declared she developed a fondness for Heyburn the first time they rehearsed the choking.

Both were formerly of the stage. It will be the first marriage for each.

Miss Nissen, whose real name is Grethe Fuzi-Nissen, is a native of Oslo, Norway. Her recent pictures include “Women of All Nations,” “Transatlantic,” and “The Silent Witness.”

Heyburn is a native of Selma, Ala., and the son of Col. Wyatt C. Franks of the United States army. He attended the University of Alabama and later George Washington University where he was graduated. He came to Hollywood from the stage last August and has important parts in a number of pictures.


TIFFANY HALTS MOVIES FROM USING FIRM NAME

New York, March 29 (AP)
Tiffany and Company, Fifth Avenue jewelers, today obtained from Supreme Court Justice Edward S. Dore, a permanent injunction restraining Tiffany Productions Inc., motion picture producers, from using the name of “Tiffany.”

The suit disclosed that the jewelry firm, established in 1837, had done business amounting to more than $350,000,000 in the last 40 years.



From Luella O. Parsons:




Los Angeles, Mar. 30
Sari Maritza has been in Hollywood so long without making a picture Paramount will have to start exploiting her all over again. She has become almost a myth now. Perhaps that it’s appropriate then that her initial picture should be “Cloudy With Showers,” for the play, like Miss Maritza, has been in the family for months without anything being done about it.

Roland Young, who sailed away to make a picture in London and who is due back here in June, will play opposite Miss Maritza. At the time Paramount bought “Cloudy With Showers,” it was intended for Fredric March and Claudette Colbert.

Probably Young and Maritza will be a better combination. Certainly Young will be very good as the master who is brought into compromising situations through no fault of his own.




Several of our best known scenario writers have changed their studio addresses the last week. Jules Furthman, well known writer of Marlene Dietrich plays, George Bancroft dramas, etc., has moved his typewriter to Columbia.

Arthur Caesar, local wit and popular with all the newspaper crowd, is at Paramount. Ben W. Levy, well known New York writer, and James Bernard Fagen, are also new on the Paramount writing staff.

Malcolm Stuart Boylan and Harvey Gates have also gone Paramount with contracts ‘n’ everything.

Sam Hoffenstein is writing the adaptation of “The Sign of the Cross.” This struck me as good for a laugh. Hoffenstein, who belongs to the ultra-sophisticated crowd and who wrote “poems in praise of practically nothing” is the last person we would imagine Cecil de Mille would appoint for this job.




The bewildering answer to fans’ demands that Clara Bow play “The Red Headed Woman,” is that Miss Bow has never been on the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer lot.

“The Red Headed Woman” is apparently not as much in Miss Bow’s thoughts as it is in the minds of the public. I have never known so many letters to demand that one person play a part. I don’t see how M-G-M, in view of this, could have the platinum blonde, Jean Harlow, make the picture. If they cannot get Clara, at least the heroine should have red hair.

Miss Bow is now negotiating with the National Broadcasting company to do a series of radio talks. The deal is all but closed. I’d like to see her make a picture first. But when has there been a time that Clara hasn’t managed things her own way?




One of the unsolved mysteries of Hollywood is Kay Johnson’s failure to click after her appearance in “Dynamite” and other pictures. She started out with a bang, but for some unknown reason she has never seemed to get back where she started.

She plays opposite Walter Huston in “Faith” and I am told it’s a good part with a fine cast. Pat O’Brien also has an important role and Jeanne Woolins – oh pardon me – I mean Jeanne Sorel, will be introduced to the movies in this picture.

4 comments:

A said...

Thanks for another great post. I found The Red Headed Woman bit especially interesting. I've seen the film, and I can't imagine anyone else in the role except Harlow.

diane said...

I agree with Amanda, it would be
hard to imagine anyone other than
Jean Harlow in the part. Having
said that, over the last year I
have seen Clara Bow in quite a few
films - even some of her "talkies"
that critics said were no good and
I think she could have played any
part that she was given. I think
she is an astonishing actress that
was just hitting her stride when
she retired.

broadway shows in new york city said...

Well, Maritza still looks beautiful despite of the cloudy shower. Hehhehe.

The read headed role just suits well to Jean Harlow.

GAH1965 said...

It was surprising to me to see how much people just took for granted that Clara Bow would play that part, and how hard it was for them to accept that Harlow could become a redhead. Typecasting had already set in for her in such a short time, I guess.