HOLLYWOOD IN PERSON.

Auckland Star, Volume LXI, Issue 33, 8 February 1930, Page 5 (Supplement)

HOLLYWOOD IN PERSON.

GOSSIP OF THE STUDIOS.,

(BY MOLLIE MERRICK.)

HOLLYWOOD (Cal.), Dec. 30,

Is the world going old-fasliioned I found the second man wearing a platinum wedding ring to-day. Maurice Chevalier, if you please.

I bumped, into him as he was coming out of the studio iirst aid station, his right arm in a sling. An accident while he was making a ladder scene for a big revue'has temporarily put the French star out of commission, and prevented his return to the east coast for the opening of his big picture. A man who wears the ribbon of the Legion of Honour in liia buttonhole makes light of a torn hand, eyen though the studio personnel .are all .a-twitter over it. We fell toi talking* '• ! . "What do you want to' do in pictures J" I asked. 1 1 ' "Be a human bein£. /that the lowliest man in the audience will understand, will know, will , , , , laugh with,'and cry •

with, and sing with. That is why I do not want, a cultivated art in my songs. Why I- use i none of the mannerisms of the actor. Have no stock gestures. No tricks. It is so easy to become an entertaining puppet, 1 so , difficult to retain the human quality." He explained all this in his delightful French accent. "I am afraid I do not make myself clear," said Chevalier. But he makes himself quite clear. That is the wily to greatness in the type celluloid a Chevalier gives us. He feels singularly fortuiiate with the opportunity to work with Ernst Lubitsch.

"He can give Continental humour a turn .which makes it understandable to American audiences," said Chevalier.

The French artist says that when he saw his first talkie in New York he didn't want to face the people with whom he was having supper.

. "I felt like one fool/' he exclaimed. "I pat on my high hat comme ca, and zutl Down Broadway.like one flash." A good many felt like that at their first talkie, but they're getting better now. -

John McCormack will be a singing teacher in the story he is now making in Hollywood under Frank Borsage's direction. (I almost said baton.)" Someone once said:

"John sings like an angel, but he always looks as if he'd lent his clothes to an elephant." Tlie day of waistlines is passed. 'When John mentioiled to William Fox the amount he would have to pay him for a talkie, Fox answered: "Mercy, let's make a merger of it."

Ina Claire intends to retain her bronzed face. It has been too much trouble slowly acquiring the ripe molten loveliness of perfect tan, says the lady who is keeping Jack Gilbert in a continual emotional flurry, to drop it. lightly merely because fashion decrees white skin. There are a few others in the colony who stand with Ina Claire on this. Evelyn Brent is not bleaching out the

almost Indian brown that months on the beach have made permanent. On the other hand, ladies may be seen marching into beauty parlours with the summer face and emerging a few hours later with a wintry physiognomy. The white-face type wears no colour whatsoever . on the cheek-bones, but the scarlet of the mouth more than makes up for this.

Evelyn Laye will arrive in Hollywood shortly. She is the blonde star of Noel Coward's recent revue, and the gentleman who found Vihna Barky and Lily Damita and giLve them cinema fame is bringing her. As a type for movies, Evelyn Laye should fce very good. She has the slim, taut quality necessary for the camera.

A Hollywood comedian was sent out to buy a thermometer so his three-weeks-old daughter could have her bath. "I see no need for a thermometer, _ he growled. "I could give her a bath just bv using mr judgment. If the water is too hot she'll turn red; if it's too cold she'll get blue. This thermometer business.: is: all nonsense."'

Hollywood has a new theme song: "Put all your money in the old tin bank and smile, smile, smile." The heaviest economy wave that has ever hit the village has descended full force. To be more truthful, it descended full force about three months ago—the news is only leaking out now. Some dozen prominent members of the colony started it when they turned their affairs ; over completely to business managers and permitted themselves to receive an allowance.

Louise Fazenda and Zazu Pitts were two of the first to do this. The net result hurt. Fifty dollars a week spending money isn't much when you've been accustomed to handing out the greenbacks and not taking notice of amounts. The business manager was a sore subject in the first days of the regime. Then he showed up one morning with an account of the savings he had banked after all bills were paid, and he at once became the dearest friend, if severest financial critic. Word'spread through the colony and the Robert Armstrongs joined the gang. Ethel Kent Armstrong went on the fifty dollar a week regime, and even paid for singing lessons out of it. Natalie Mooreliead and Lila Lee came in. Anthony Bushell and Zelma O'Neal hadn't been in the .colony more than a. few weeks when they joined the economists. '• The 'fifty a week must include all spending money, even gasoline for the car. Repairs and household bills come out of another account. Twice a year there's a budget for replenishment of wardrobe. But all incidental expenses, such as gloves, the occasional hat, shoes and incidental frocks not purchased on the bi-yearly budgets come out of the fifty. , , . , There are ways of cheating. Some ol the girls order their cigarettes on their grocery bills. But the novelty of matching pennies has ciught on like no fad the village "lias indulged in for several years.

We go in for the extravagant gesture in many ways in this gelatine kingdom. Dog and cat hospitals send out little ambulances with uniformed attendants to pick up patients and take them to the doctor. Service comes high—the animals are the aristocrats of their-kind. But something I did not know until to-day -is that fact that the swankiest of these places runs a free clinic for the poor.' A strange .waiting line at the back door of the hospital attracted my attention. A ragged urchin carried a scraggly Airedale. A woman whose black dress was a rusty green from Jong exposure to the elements held an ailing alley cat in her arms. A shabby, middle-aged mac had a puppy with distemper. They g n t the same diagnosis as the pets of the stars, and, if necessary, arc kept at the hospital free of charge until cured.

It takes all .kinds of'ladies to make a movie colony interesting. Some are reincarnations of" luxurious beauties of history. Some are a law unto themselves with their M. .1. brown faces and ' perpetual outdoor type, even in the drawing -, room, where - their dinner frocks are really . tennis dresses fashioned from cloth of gold oiv velvet. But Ann 'Harding is the outstanding beauty of the moment, and the — most practical person in Hollywood. For two months now, she and lier husband, Harry Bannister, have been working in overalls on the site of their new home._ Baby Bannister, carried there in his bassinet, takes sunbaths, while his parents direct ivorkmen.

Ann Harding is regarded as something of a freak in the village and among the cinema stars of the old school.

When talking pictures became an established factor in entertainment, readers all over the country wrote asking some assurance that silent films would he retained. Most of-these joined their pleas for silent pictures with lively denunciations of the sound or audible film.

It is interesting to relate that some of the most fiery disciples of pantomime without vocal accompaniment have since written to say they are reconciled to talkies, have even become attached to them.

The following is typical of the change of heart. It proves that with- a little patience the public will come to see the increased possibilities for advancement in the talkie, and will enjoy it as thoroughly as they once did the old film-form.

Dear Miss Merrick, "Some weeks ago when you were debating the popularity of talkie versus silent films, I wrote you that I did not care much for the talkies. At that time, they were not so good; but since then we have had 'The Last of Mrs. Cheney/ 'Madame X,' 'Gold Diggers of Broadway,' 'The Lady Lies' and so many others that I cannot recall just now. So I take hack all I said against the talking pictures. - "This week we have Gloria Swanson in 'The Trespasser.' She has everything -—looks, voice, acting and an easy grace that few people know anything about. I'm extremely fond of the theatre, so I<am enjoying all these artistic things to the fullest;"