Hollywood’s Lures

Dominion, Volume 32, Issue 257, 28 July 1939, Page 14

Hollywood’s Lures

Rex Harrison May Leave England

HOLLYWOOD producers are eagerly looking in England for potential screen stars. Several artists of distinction refuse to go to America for film ■work. Other performers are waiting for good offers. Do not be surprised if Rex Harrison is soon on his way to Hollywood, writes a Hollywood correspondent. Paramount’s British picture “The Silent Battle,” recently trade-shown in London, presents him for the first time in a star role. “The Silent Battle” begins with flashes of London in the September crisis, but the film soon settles down into a train drama of spies and mistaken identities. Rex Harrison plays a Secret Service agent, hiding his job under the pretence of acting as courier to a tiresome middle-aged Englishwoman and her stodgy child. He does well and has opportunities to exploit the easy, charm which won him countless admirers in “The Citadel.” Though he began his stage career at 16, this 31-year-old actor did not win distinction till 1930. Like Robert Donat and Michael Redgrave, Rex Harrison learned his job at the Liverpool Repertory Theatre. Dor 11 years he toured the English provinces in small parts, with an occasional role in a minor quota film. He was a reporter in “Men are Not Gods,” with Miriam Hopkins, and another reporter in “Storm in a Teacup,” with Vivien Leigh. He also played opposite Vivien in the Charles Laughton film “St. Martin’s Lane,” and opposite Merle Oberon in “Over the Moon.” Currently with these film parts he played for over two years the lead in “French Without Tears.” He wants yery much to make a film in Hollywood “because no one can really become a star without the privilege of at least ®ne film there.”