HOLLYWOOD'S BRITISH COLONY

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 249, 20 October 1928, Page 5 (Supplement)

HOLLYWOOD'S BRITISH COLONY

A CRUISE WITH RE& DENNY.

«mu> oowu in noma

HeLAGLDT.

A BREAKFAST-TABLE COMEDY.

(By D. M. MONTGOMERY.)

Beg. Denny, Ronald Colman, Victor McLaglen—these three Englishmen dominate the British colony in Hollywood; McLaglen, I fancy, has become a naturalised American, bat he is still as EngHstf as his birth. He told me, when I was chatting to him at lunch time at the Fox Studio one day, that he had rolled around the world—wrestled, boxed, mixed in gold rushes and silver rushes, fought in a couple of wars, been a policeman in Baghdad and got knifed, and t-a-THgfl lumimi in the South Sea Islands, and been

>eared. "I broke into the pictures in the

National Sporting Club in good old Lant don," he laughed. "I had a fight there B against a big Scotsman after the war, and won, and Peggy Bettinson Eugene Corrie said they'd fix up some more matches for me.. I relied on boxing to get me the money for food and lodging. There weren't any jobs for a rolling stone like me after the war. "A film fellow came up to me in the bar one day and said -1 looked a likely j type for a picture he was going to make. \ I-said, Try me.' He did, and gave me the j job. I made a few fighting pictures with him, and then I was introduced to Stuart Blackton, who was in England to make The Glorious Adventure' with Lady Diana Duff Cooper. He looked me over and gave me the featured male role. And when he got back he cabled me an offer to go out and make The Beloved Brute.' It was a role that just suited me." He landed in Hollywood with scarcely the proverbial "bob." Now they say he's in the £30,000 a year class. One film, "What Price Glory " put him there. Begin*ld Denny is post-war, too. He was born in England in theatrical stock, is and before the war he toured the world as leading baritone with the Bandaman Opera Company. He threw up a contract to star in musical comedy in New York when the war broke out, and sailed to England to enlist. His wife stayed on in New York, pursuing her stage career. Beg. did not return until the end of war. Then he found his wife desperately iIL He had no money. She had to have an operation. He went all over New York trying to raise £250 for that operation. Morris Gest lent him money without a word. Nott Morris Gest has only to command and beany will obey. I spent three days cruising with the Dennys in their yacht. It is a cabin cruiser with a radius of 300 mJcs. It nearly got wrecked when we were cruising down to a group of islands off the Mexican coast. A gale sprang up, and the wireless said that no mmII ship could live in it. The Universal people got so worried that they chartered a seaplane and flew over the sea for miles looking > for us. But they didn't find us. We were, in fact, in harbour at Ensenada. We just run to cover in time. m "Reg always bobs up smiling," laughed his pretty wife. Since then they have been divorced. . r. We came back from the trip with a couple .of hundred pounds of fish. "Enough to keep the old larder going if the salary doesn't turn up this week," remarked Denny gaily as he helped to the catch into the tonneau of the car. He is making, I fancy, some £40,000 a year! Ronald Colman is one of the romances of Hollywood. Stars wax and wane very swiftly there, but this lean young Englishman with the glamourous way of making love looks like lasting for a long time. I first saw him at work on the set. As we came into the great echoing place he was just stepping down, under the glare of the Kleigs, from the faggot-encircled stake at which he was about to be burnt. The mediaeval church, with gaily clad lords and ladies thronging its stone steps, made a colourful background for him. His hair, usually so carefully brushed, was a roughened mass of curls, sideburns framed his dark face, and rustybrown, gipsy garb added the last effective touch to the perfect figure of romance. . I saw a good deal of Jack Gilbert at parties when I was in Hollywood. He is evidently very popular, and a great motorist and dancer. One of the last memories I have is of a dance which

"took in" another big party at the Rancho B Club. The wistful T.iTHun Gish was of the party. Lillian spent the rest of the evening whirling volatilely about the floor in the arms of Jack Gilbert. J&ck Gilbert was among the guests ~~ when I was at a house party up at the Hearst ranch. He kept us all amused. He is full" of life, ideas, conversation, fun and—hair. His hair was eight inches long then, black and wavy. He looked strikingly picturesque. He was making a costume picture and wearing his own hair instead of a wig. They all do this if possible. Tony Moreno can grow some wonderful black hair iif a very short time, and so can Ramon Navarro. Big Ernest Torrence is always growing beards and cutting them off again. Lon Chaney can't grow hair easily and wears wigs and false beards. They told me that Rudolph Valentino once grew a fine Spanish beard in a month. In ordinary society a man's passing preference for this or that pretty girl for dinner or the dance would excite no comment. But in the highly-spiced air of the film colony the most trifling shift or change starts gossip, if not in the studios, then in the newspapers. Here is a little comedy that is enacted almost any morning in Hollywood. Characters, almost any well-known players—she at her breakfast table, he at his. Somewhere between grapefruit and the second cup of coffee, the actress at her table and the actor at his, clutch

cue morning newspaper and gasp. There, in print, is a short paragraph linking their names with a fatuous mention of a "certain little blind god." "But I hardly know him!" cries tfie lady in the case, exchanging her napkin for a handkerchief.

Perhaps the actor is able to recall after an effort that he danced with her two or three times at the last Sixtv He aßn ' t heard of her «niw. Possibly one of the two is already married or engaged, or hopes to be soon, which adds complications. The recent tad. of . popular juvenile Sigl3*y WO" ""ding of «h, t happened to her husband in wick* to find him as mystifiedas