HOLLYWOOD NOTES.

Auckland Star, Volume LX, Issue 152, 29 June 1929, Page 5 (Supplement)

HOLLYWOOD NOTES.

GOSSIP OF THE STUDIOS. (By MOLLIE MERRICK.) (Copyright N.A.N.A. and "Auckland Star.") HOLLYWOOD, Calif., May 28. A brilliant and colourful Hollywood career has come to a sudden close. Camilla Horn is going liome to Germany to be a star at the studio where she played before the cinema centre of the world claimed her. The girl who is as deiicately lovely as a cameo will be lost to American audiences. Thi Camilla whose practicalities and economies set extravagant and bizarre moviedom wondering will maintain her economical regime in the homeland. Wise Camilla is probably financially ahead of her Amer ic a n year. Had she gone Hollywood the stay in movieland would have been a liability rather than an asset. Talkies killed Camilla Horn. A few of the foreign artists will survive them. Hollywood feels that Lily Damita's accent is adorable and will fascinate the public as much as her laughing eyes. Olga Baclanova is counted among those whose accents are negotiable. There is a certain monotony even to the most attractive accent. The voice suffers from a lack of tonal range and a curtailment of the emotional nuances which are the prerogative of one. exquisitely trained in the language.

Alice White has been starring in light comedies in the silent films. She has built up her reputation on naughtiness, cuteness and pertness. She's getting about four hours sleep these nights. She's had to learn to play the saxophone, to do. clog dancing, acrobatic dancing and to sing. Her studio decided to star her in the leading role of a well-known musical comedy. As one who has had the apartment directly beneath hers I can vow that most of the night was given over to practice. Saxophone moans coming weirdly 011 the night air at 3 a.m., punching th„ bag at 7 a.m., clog dancing and the usual reduction exercises before midnight. There are times when one is grateful that the nimbus of stardom has been left out of one's cosmic make-un.

And the same wave which washes Camilla Horn out of Hollywood swings Eelene Chadwick back into the studio lights. You remember Helene Chadwick if you were a persistent movie-goer a few years back. She has an intriguing • smile. But there was no mystery about her. She didn't release any exotic sex appeal which could be transferred into such word tags as "the leopard voman." In a day when Pola Negri was emoting on the screens of the earth, a Helene Chadwick, bad, more or less, to keep sucli following as wanted a nice girl with good dramatic instinct, a . thoroughly American type. Hollywood beauties feel that their indulgence in cubistic and modernistic furnishings and interior decorating effects is responsible for some of their nervonsnes- and sleeplessness. Diane Ellis says that a bedroom done in black and gold with futuristic furniture on which a dull red is liberally displayed is quite sufficient to keep a nervous, high-strung, temperamental artist from getting a wink of sleep all night. She's right. A day labourer would be entitled to insomnia in the boudoir of some of the celluloid successes. Greens, soft b'jes and peach colours and the silvery tones of pastel shades will have to come back, is the verdict. All of which is music in the ears of those who cater to the form moderne and the bank book ample.

[ I was walking along one of the larger i studio lots when a sharp hissing sound assailed my ears. "What's that?" "Oil, that's Warner Oland learning to hiss," explained my guide. "Has no been made a talkie critic?" "No, but he's playing the part of a Chinese in a talkie, and they've got an old Chinese in there teaching him to draw iii his breath and give the effect of deep satisfaction." All in a talkie day! Vilma Banky is having a vacation while await- | ing the start of her next picture. She divides lier day thus: Four hours' golf. Four hours' English lessons. Four hours' companionship with Rod la Rocque, her husband. Said a Hollywood cynic who heard this: "Well, th e re's such a, thing as too much punishment. I'd cut either the English lesson or la llocque." Mary Brian, a plastic beauty who looks as if mother's apron strings were not far away. Buddy Rogers with the side chops of fifty years ago, and trouscr pleats. Adolph Menjou—what's going to happen to him now that an artist has to be something of a Booth and a Barrett, with a little tiglit-rope walking, mind reading, high diving, soft shoe dancing and monologue on the side? Adolph isn't bothered. 'Tis whispered that he has put a dime a day in his bank. If talkies create . rain he can just run away and live on the proceeds of his art.

Mae Murray is surviving the Hollywood rev I nf- ; on with her customary good fortune. She lias just signed a contract for 7500 dollars a week. In this day pictures are advertised as bigger arid better, but salaries, as any star can tell you, are apt to become smaller and smaller. Mae Murray has been in the game long t :T, io. Disagreeabl" people with a penchant for remembering ages credit Mae with ijiiite a number of summers. But she has preserved her girlish figure and a certain element for the public which is not really analysable. She is a Princess—oiie of the Mdvanis, Pol a, Negri's brother-in-law, in fact, being her husband. She has a blonde baby who figures largely in her private life. And she has a happy faculty of acquiring all these things at the precise moments when publicity is needed.

Along the boulevarde. Significant absence of those ladies who hitherto contributed to the bizarre quality and colour of this main thoroughfare. They are all home practising a new art, with set fices. It is do or die this trip for the silent goddesses of yesterday. Nigel de Brulier walking along in the sunshine. Years of playing prophetascetic roles have ,'iven him a saintly tread. Junior Laemmle arriving at a cafe for luncheon. Srrounded by. sycophantic circles. This boy wonder of production has money to spend. And while you have you are never alone in Hollywood. In ' which respect it is pretty much the same as other places. Colleen Mr _ in a sailrv suit with kilted skirt and blouse. The type worn by children of twelve a score of years ago. Little hat turned up all around. Billie Dove on a bicycle, rounding curves as high speed. Flattening body curves in so doing. The Dove uses bicycling purely for reduction. And she has a number of the girls pedalling 'n the morning as 4a, result. As a matter of fact •iillie Dove has one of those figures which permit extravagant eating, and yet retain their slimnees, ]