NOTES FROM STUDIOS

Press, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22424, 10 June 1938, Page 5

NOTES FROM STUDIOS

Warner Oland has signed a new contract for three more Charlie Chan pictures.

Warners have decided to film all future open-air pictures, starting with “Valley of the Giants,” against their natural backgrounds.

Columbia have signed Joan Blonde! I’s sister Gloria to a long term contract, Frank Capra made the tests.

Beatrice Roberts, leading lady in a few second features and lately in “Flash Gordon’s Trip to Mars,” plays opposite Victor McLaglen in “Riot Squad,” Universal changed the title from “Hell’s Kitchen” and raised the budget by £BO,OOO.

Claudia Morgan, daughter of Ralph, has now an M-G-M contract on the strength of her stage work in “Wine of Choice.”

• » m •* * • Joel McCrea has gone on loan from Goldwyn to Universal, to play with Deanna Durbin in “Three Smart Girls Leave Town.” Goldwyn has also lent the director, Archie Mayo.

M-G-M have bought the rights to “The Rosary," already twice filmed, once in England seven years ago with Margot Grahame and Elizabeth Allan, and 16 years ago by First National. * * *

Richard Greene, Twentieth CenturyFox’s young English leading man, will play Stanley in Zanuck’s film about Livingstone. ■* * *

D. W, Griffith has made a present of 250,000 feet of his early films to the film library of the Museum of Modern Art. Included are “Judith of Bethulia,” “Intolerance,” “Broken Blossoms,’* and “Orphans of the Storm.” ' ■*■ * •

Jean Parker, who has not played in a film since “The Barrier’,” is 'to be teamed, with Eric Linden in Monogram’s remake of the Gene Stratton Porter story, “The Girl of the Limberlost.” The silent version was also made",by. Monogram, starring Marian Marsh.

* • * Binnie Barnes has been added to the cast;of “Three Blind Mice,” Loretta Young’s new, picture for Twentieth Century-Fox. She has just finished playing in “Tropic Holiday” for Paramount.

Franchot Tone, Maureen O’Sullivan, and Walter Pidgeon have been cast for :the.leading.roles in M-G-M’s “Way of the River.’’ The story is set on the banks of the Mississippi, which was also the setting of “Banjo on My Knee.”