News Flashes From Filmdom

Northern Advocate, 22 April 1939, Page 3 (Supplement)

News Flashes From Filmdom

“THE HIDDEN STAIRCASE.” The fourth in Warner Brothers’ Bonita Granville series. “The Hidden Staircase,” will be directed by William Clemens.

CHAPLIN IN TALKING ROLE Charles, Chaplin will commence actual production on his first all-talking picture for United Artists tentatively titled “The Dictator,” early this year. lAN HAY STORY lan Hay’s successful book and West End play. “The Housemaster,” has been made into a thoroughly entertaining film, with a great English public school providing a novel background for the action, FAY BAINTER Columbia has signed Fay Bainter, well-known stage and screen actress to play the name role in “Old Mrs Leonard and Her Machine-guns,” which will be placed in work in the near future, with Ben Stolofi directing. The script is by Richard Mailbaum and Gertrude Percell. from the original story by George Bradshaw and Price Day. Fred Kohlmar is the producer. Miss Bainter, who for many years has been a successful Broadway player, began her screen career with “Quality Street.” Her latest film in which she is featured is “Jezebel,” and just prior to that in “Mother Carey’s Chickens.” Her last stage success was the Broadway production of “Dodsworth,” in support of Walter Huston, with whom she later toured in the same play.

CASINO SHOWS N .. Many artists are en route from Europe and America for the first of the big Casino Revues, which will be staged at Melbourne In March. Mr Ernest C. Rolls purchased the whole of the London production of these shows during his recent visit to Europe, and they are to arrive in Australia shortly.

A STAR’S VALUE Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer paid nearly £200.000 to persuade Norma Shearer to continue her film career after the death in 1936 of her husband, Irving Thalberg. EDNA MAY OLIVER Edna May Oliver, considered by man ycritics America’s greatest character comedienne, has been signed by RKO-Radio Pictures for one of the most important supporting roles in “The Castles,” now in production, with Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers costarring. JOAN CRAWFORD DANCES, In “The Shining Hour,” Joan Crawford returns to an art which brought her fame, but which she has shunned for the last five years. That art is dancing. “And dancing was my first goal,” she laughed. “I felt very sad when I signed my first screen contract because my dreams of becoming the greatest dancer in the world had to be temporarily discarded. Then strangely enough dancing worked into my picture career. By the time I abandoned it I felt that it had become almost a Frankenstein." .But the star admits a certain thrill at donning her dancing slippers once again for the opening sequences of the new production. “Only it frightened me,” she laughed. “Five years is a long time. The day that the camera began to grind on the dance numbers I was so nervous my knees knocked.”