They All Want To Be Funny

Auckland Star, Volume LXVIII, Issue 270, 13 November 1937, Page 7 (Supplement)

They All Want To Be Funny

GRETA GARBO is not content to be the Garbo we know. Marlene

Dietrich, Norma Shearer and other celebrities, whose existing personalities have done eo much for them, yearn for a change from themselves.

The urge among the women stars at the moment aeems to be all in one direction. They would all like to be funny. Not one of the stars named above built her fame on making people laugh. Yet that is what they all want to do now.

Garbo i* the most surprising would-be comedienne. So far her dazzling smile and rippling, throaty laugh have been employed to contrast with her tragic moments. Recently she left the impression that the one thing in the world she wanted to do was to play in "Tovarich," the French comedy so deftly translated by Robert Sherwood into a London and New York stage hit.

Her wish could not be fulfilled. In spite of all her efforts to see her studio, M.G.M., secure the play, Warner Brothers bought it, and borrowed Claudette Colbert for the part. That annoyed Kay Francis (a Warner

Brothers' star) so much that she has gone to law about her contract and wants to «ee it torn up.

Dietrich's wi«h is to do "French Without Tears." She has a better chance of getting her way. Paramount bought it at her instigation —and she has that performance in "Desire" to back up her claims to be excused from the heavier drama for a temporary comedy excursion.

Norma Shearer's outburst will come in a Robert Sherwood play, "Idiot's Delight," which was a Broadway hit for Lvnn Fontanne.

Madeleine Carroll's new film is a highspirited piece of nonsense called "Love on Parole."

In another of the new films, "The Emperor's Candlesticks," Luise Rainer is not exactly funny but plays in a skittish vein that is practically farce when you recall her "Goad Earth."

Hollywood traces all this fun-seeking back to Carole Lombard in "My Man Godfrey." There the stars saw that a beautiful woman with a high acting reputation could be quite crazy and get away with it.

Several of them have tried it already: Miriam Hopkins in "Woman Chases Man," Irene Dunne in "Theodora Goes Wild," Jean Arthur in "Easy Living," Joan Crawford quitting the sombre "Parnell"' for the graceful wit of "Mrs. Cheyney," and Loretta Young in "Love is News."