HOLLYWOOD IN PERSON.

Auckland Star, Volume LX, Issue 230, 28 September 1929, Page 5 (Supplement)

HOLLYWOOD IN PERSON.

GOSSIP OF THE STUDIOS. (By MOLLIE MERRICK.) HOLLYWOOD (Cal.), August 30. The persistent rumour of an engagement between Ruth Elder arid' Hoot Gibson promises crystallisation far more than previous romancings of the type. Since the handsome flyer landed in movieland she has been the star of one romance or another. Ruth Elder has "it" a-plenty. . Men flock about her, and to appear more than twice with the same cavalier in this village, is to invite matrimonial speculation.

Richard Dix was a cavalier for a time. Ruth Elder was his leading lady and it was quite natural that he should see something of iher outside working hours. Marceline Day, who was then said to have the inside track where Dix's aflections . were concerned, didn't seem bothered. As events proved she did have the inside track—and probably still has. Ben Lyon was another Elderite. He and Ruth had the common interest of aviation. . • But before Hoot Gibson arrived on the scene Ben Lyon announced his engagement to- Bebe Daniels. . She also likes the upper altitudes. Now the boulevard thinks Hoot Gibson is the permanent suitor. He used to be. a cowboy star < when movies had such, a thing. To-day he has been graduated into other and more dignified'fields.

An endless queue of people lined for blocks in the torrid.heat of early afternoon. The attraction was a revival of "The ■ Four ' Horsemen" 'with' Rudolph Valentino. This silent film swung an unknown young actor to the pinnacle of stardom. Curious to know what my reaction would be, I persuaded the doorman to let me in. There were baleful glances from the lined-up multitude. It was a small theatre and they .feared quite rightly that they would-not all achieve entrance. They didn't—a good-two hundred were turned away.: Those who did get in saw one of the most interesting story panoramas yet made unfold again before them. I really doubt if anything like the sequence of old Desnoyers surveying his cattle in the Argentine has ever been made since. Valentino's appearance on the screen was greeted with, a burstw of applause. This revival: of a famous silent film proved several interesting points. First, that subtitles are very boring to one already accustomed to the easy absorption of necessary. , facts, viadialogue and camera. Another ■■ think, the war sequences seemed interminably long; and sound invests war with a convincing quality no silent film can ever possess. Womens' clothes have changed so radically since .those. shots. of Alice Terry thai it is difficult to judge of her beauty and' charm because they are so handicapped by de mode, styles. The men could have gotten by easily in a modern picture to all but the exceedingly observant or usually well-informed. Joseph' Sigwart, ; who played the role of old Desnoyers, sat in the row ahead of |me, enjoying .himself hugely, and scarcely changed for all the years. The picture fades out with a shot of the father weeping at the grave of his soldier-son. I felt a tap on my arm when the final fadeout was made. A woman, middle-aged and with her face red and swollen from weeping, said: "How many of. them would visit his grave now that he. is gone from us—the poor fellow?" Sheer surprise robbed me of an adequate answer. I blinked out into' the afternoon sunshine wondering. Everything passes in life—youth, joy, ambition, accomplishment. Friendship often survives. Sex never fails to survive. Rudolph Valentino kept a world aware of the romance in sex in a way that none of his successors has managed to do. Cecil de Mille returns to the type of movie which brought him among the gentry of gelatineland, the thriller type of story with the inevitable wealthy girl. A skilful enough mingling of upper and lower strate gives the great director such latitude as crystal bath-tubs and the fifth level of a coal mine in which to display his versatility. With such a 1

ganiut of setting and emotionalism needless to say a good time ws had by alleven the audience. Kay Johnson, ■of Broadway, was imported for this talkie. She is chic and able. Charles Bickford and Conrad Nagle were the rivals from extreme ends of the social pendulum. There was a mine blast and a theme song. And there was no master of ceremonies at the opening. Hollywood, which once lingered on and on in its seats and could never get its fill of introductions and hand-clapping, has learned the horrid New York habit of being half-way into the aisle with the first symptom of the story's close.

Maurice Chevalier goes back to Paris for the fall season. The musical comedy he has been making under Ernst Lubitsch's directions, is finished, and Chevalier must fulfil his duties to the public which originally acclaimed him. Business affairs in Paris have their share of interest also. Chevalier hasn't been a popular grasshopper type. If he has sung and made merry for the world he has also put by some of the proceeds. Much of this money is invested in night clubs, and,some of the charm of these is an occasional glimpse of the owner's smiling. face and a delightful impromptu song or two. Chevalier says motion pictures—or audible pictures—have classified him for the world in his precise niche. He feels that he is an entertainer, and that the talkies establish this fact with the general public. . . . When he returns to in October he will work in the studio's Long Island plant. More more pictures are beiiig made on the East Coast. In time a generous rivalry may spring up between the centres of production. At present, Hollywood has the best of it, as the major productions are being done here—and the major disagreements happen in this place.

If a few years ago anyone had been rash enough to predict that Elsie Janis would abandon the footlights for a writing" career and the post of supervisor in a Hollywood studio, an alienist would have been called. But the indefatigable Elsie, '. about whom movies have been made, and to whom some of the world's finest audiences have capitulated, has done that very .thing. At the studio, where she will officiate, they have a leaning toward the musical theme these days. And Elsie, Jan.is as supervisor will be a valuable addition to the personnel of musical comedy production. Hollywood doesn't seem alien to he/, as the people she has worked with through the years are all hereabouts.

Georges Carpentier, newly-arrived in the land of stars, was an onlooker the other afternoon at Jack Warner's swim-ming-pool, smart social centre of all professional Hollywood. A man with sex appeal a-plenty and temperament galore, in impeccable flannels, whose plaited trousers yielded not one whit to the sartorial extravagances of the village beaux, Carpentier stood on the rim of the.pool watching the famous disport themselves. Young Jackie Warner, a, celluloid scion of 'sonie eleven or twelve, was making merry aquatically with a huge rub•ber .fish. Suddenly he disappeared, and from beneath the fish emerged plenteous bubbles and frantic indications of submarine struggle.

Carpentier watched for a moment in pale intensity. Suddenly lie leaped, flannels and all, into the pool. Two strokes took him to where small Jackie was supposed to be fighting the grim reaper. Aβ Carpentier was about to dive land eeize the drowning boy, Jackie bobbed to the surface with a gleeful, "Ho! Ho! I was foolin , —" A bit later an embarrassed host stood that French pugilist, who has such undying charm for the women of the earth, up before a trick Hollywood fear and tried to make him forget his soaked clothing in the delights of an erpertly-mixed cocktailCarpentier, it seems, had once sat in a crowd at Deauville when a child had been playing at drowning, and laughed at 'his antics, only to find later that the boy was really in need of help. He never forgot the incident and the sight of Jackie Warner's struggles brought back that tragedy so vividly that the product of a Bond Street tailor was of no consequence in view, of'the-stress of 'the moment..