SCREENLAND SECRETS

Stratford Evening Post, Volume III, Issue 349, 2 May 1935, Page 7

SCREENLAND SECRETS

BY ' JOHN HOLT

We’ro saving this tale of the lato Lowell Sherman so that we’ll always remember what a big man he really was— The late director was always something of a god in the eyes of Barry Trivers. Trivers was on the set every minute of the shooting of Sherman’s last picture, “The Night Life of the Gods. And he learned plenty from the old maestro. inaliy, one day, Trivers said to Sherman, “You know, I’d like to take your place ten years from now.” And Sherman replied; “If I’m not still here, I hope you do, and if I am still here . . . I’ll move over.” xxx The four —er, pardon us —the THREE Marx Brothers have instructed the M-G-M Casting Department to find three leading ladies for their next picture. Specifications; All three- must look like Jean Harlow! xxx When they were filming “The Merry Widow” a few weeks back a fellow was perched high on the rafters to adjust his camera for a trick shot. This fellow was trying awfully hard to hear what the, number of the scene wa?. Not only that, he was trying hard to make himself heard so he could hear what the number was. The only difficulty was that someone was doggedly, if not beautifully, playing the piano on the set, and nothing could be heard above that. Finally, the lad on the rafters yelled down a particularly impolite series of invitations to the piano player to stop. And with that, no less a personage than Director Ernest Lubftsch rose . from the piano

bench and, with , mild “Okay, I’ll stop,” walked away. But the boy on the rafters almost fell out ami broke his neck, he was that embarrassed, X X X Since every reporter in .town is turning out paragraphs on Garbo nowadays, we may as well pass along the following— When Garbo paid her highly-pub-licised visit to the Cafe Trocadero just a few weeks- back, Michael Pearman happened along and, seeing Garbo from the back, thought it was Lili Damita because her hair was combed just like Lili’a of late. So he touched her affectionately on the shoulder and screamed, “Hello, Toots!”

And what do you think? Garbo took it all very sweetly and just looked up and smiled “Hello.” Pearman collapsed!

Incidentally— , There’s a gal in town who’s I:

putting on quite a much-alike-as-you’d-ever-guess Garbo act. She walks like Garbo, dresses like Garbo, looks ]iko Garbo —and even pretends she IS Garbo!

Just the other night, this gal attended the opera and the boys of the press were so sure this goofy impersonator was the glamorous Swede that they had her pho.to’d in practically every conceivable pose. And what more, the next morning, papers ail over the United States printed those photos!

The gal over on the M-G-M lot you used to know as Muriel Evans still is called that. But she’s a brunette now. Brunette and terribly, terribly soignee. Also, and God help her if she gets near some one smoking a cigarette, she is wearing cellophane evening gowns these theatre and club nights.

There’s an opening scene in “Merrily We Roll Along” which calls for the players to indulge in a bridge game,. And when Kenneth McKenna was dealt his hand he found that ho held NINE spades—and the script forced him to say, “I PASS!”

Perhaps this will mlp to shatter some more of yonr illusions about Hollywood— About nine-tenths of all those avia-

tion scenes you see. in pictures in which a grim-faccd hero sits in a plane are actually filmed IN DOORS. F’rinstancc, over on the M-G-M lot, there’s a sound stage all rigged up for the aerial scenes in “West Point

of the Air,” the aviation epic featuring Wallace Rcery, Robert Young, and. Lewis Stone. And here’s how it works — If the script calls for a scene with Mister Beery leading a squad of planes in flight formation, the studio crew will lower a prop plane fro mi the roof of the sound stage and Mr. Berry will climb in and either look calm, cool and collected or wid-eyed and menacing—it all depends on the script. Then, behind the lowered

Plane will be a motion picture screen upon which will be projected actual scenes of planes in flight. The whole thing will bo photographed.' with Beery’s plane, in front, and the finished job will look so feal that it would take un expert to detect it from the real McCoy. Clever. Yes? That little trick saves studios thousands of dollars annually.