The Moving Row of Magic Shadow Shapes

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXXIV, Issue 18849, 11 April 1931, Page 9

The Moving Row of Magic Shadow Shapes

OMAR KHAYAM

Lionel Barrymore, who, during the past two years has given up acting in favour of directorial works, will play a leading role fn Norma Shearer’s new film, “A Free Soul,” according to an announcement by Metro - Goldwyn - Mayer,

This is an age of doing. A few years ago June Collyer would have been content to remain at her home in New York and receive the attention usually accorded an attractive young woman of social prominence. Such a life, however, held no attractions for her, so she Journeyed to Hollywood and made a name for herself in pictures. Her latest is the Columbia talkie version of “Charley’s Aunt,” soon to be released in this Dominion.

Enid Bennett, an Australian actress and popular leading woman of silent pictures until her retirement a few years ago, has been engaged to play the role of Mrs Skinner in Paramount’s current juvenile talkie, “Skippy.” Jackie Cooper plays the title role, and Mitzi Green, Jackie Searl and Robert Coogan have other featured parts. Norman Taurog and David Burton are directing.

Harry Akst, composer of a score of popular songs, including “Am I Blue” and “Dinah,” is to make his debut as an actor in one of the important supporting roles in “The Boy Wonder,” Jack Oakie’s current Paramount comedy. He is appearing with a group of well-known screen players, including Frances Dee, Wynne Gibson, Sam Hardy, and Harold Waldridge. Edward Sutherland is directing.

With the assignment of Charlie Ruggles to an important role, and the choice of Katherine Leslie and Melvin Douglas for the remaining parts, the cast of Paramount’s “New York Lady” is now complete. Tallulah Bankhead and Clive Brook, who co-star in the film, recently started work under the direction of George Cukor. The picture is from an original screen story by Donald Ogden Stewart.

Radio Pictures have acquired talking picture rights to “Bachelor Apartment,” an original stofy by John Howard Lawson. Lowell Sherman has been assigned by William Le Baron, vice-presi-dent in charge of Radio Pictures production, to direct and play the lead. The story deals with the romance of a wealthy philandering bachelor, and is said to suit the type of characterisations given by Sherman on the screen.

The Warner Bros, and Vitaphone production, “Viennese Nights,” promises to be an event of unusual interest to the motion picture public. It is the first original screen romance written by Sigmund Romberg &nd Oscar Hammerstein 11., and nothing just like

"Viennese Nights” has ever before been put on the screen. It contains an original symphony played by an orchestra of one hundred pieces, and the entire picture is photographed in Technicolour. Walter Pidgeon, Vivienne Segal, and Alexander Gray head the cast of gifted players!

Herbert Brenon has made another impressive gesture towards the realisation of an ideal in motion picture production in his talking picture venture for Radio Pictures, “Beau Ideal,” sequel to his formed triuniph, “Beau Geste.” Drama, spectacle, the beauties

of the desert, dashing romance, and daring adventure have all been combined into what is confidently anticipated by Radio Pictures’ officials to be one of the important productions of the year. One of the best known casts in Hollywood, including Ralph Forbes, Don Alvarado, Leni Stengel. Loretta Young, Irene Rich, and many others, play important parts. Lester Vail, stage actor “discovered” by Brenon, has the heroic lead.

Metro - Goldwyn - Mayer announces that it has bought the motion picture rights to four English stage successes. These are “Private Lives,” by Noel Coward, “The Man in Possession.” by H. M. Harwood, “The Way to Treat a Woman,” and “By Candle Light.”

“Old English,” the Galsworthy play which proved popular when played on the stage by George Arliss, and which has been made into a Warner Bros, and Vitaphone production, will be shown here shortly. Incidentally “Old English” is the first Galsworthy drama to reach the talking screen.

Loretta Young, in “The Truth About Youth,” the First National and Vitaphone production which will be shown here shortly, plays the role of Phyllis Ericson, which was created by Maxime Elliott in the H. V. Esmond comedy, “When We Were Twenty-one,” from which “The Truth About Youth” has been adapted and modernised. The eighteen-year-old star is supported by David Manners, Conway Tearle, and Myrna Loy.

Michael Balcon, of Gainsborough Pictures, has speeded up. Further stories for Gainsborough this year are “The Hound of the Baskervilles,” “Michael and Mary,” with Edna Best and Herbert Marshall in their original stage roles, tc K Night in Montmartre,” based on a drama by Miles Mallison, which will probably be directed by Leslie Hiscott, and “The Ghost Train,” and adaptation of Arnold Ridley’s thriller.

“Blind Wives” was decided upon as the talking picture for Sidney Howard’s play, “Half God,” which original screen title was originally “Free Love,” and which Hobart Heney produced at Universal City with Genevieve Tobin and Conrad Nagel, who made a great hit in “A Lady Surrenders,” in the featured roles. Others in the cast are Slim Summerville, Bertha Mann, character acress, and George Irving, former director.

The Paramount dramatic film costarring Claudette Colbert and Fredric March, which was announced as “Another Man’s Wife,” has been retitled “Ladies in Business.” It is from an original story by Austin Parker, dealing with a married woman in business who falls in love with her employer. Dorothy Arzner directed, and Charles Ruggles, Ginger Rogers, Monroe Owsley, and Ralph Morgan lend support.

“The Lion and the Lamb,” one of the best selling mystery stories, has been transferred to the screen by Columbia Pictures, and is due for release shortly. This tale of the underworld was written by E. Phillips Oppenheim. “The Lion and the Lamb” ran in “Collier’s Magazine” in serial form, and was read by millions of readers. In bringing it to the screen Columbia has aseembled a cast including Walter Byron, Carmel Myers, who plays a typical vamp role, Montagu Love, w r ho plays a sinister master crook, and Raymond Hatton. Miriam Seegar has the feminine role.

One of the most important Fox Movietone casting announcements recently was that making known the selection Cecelia Loftus for the role of the landlady in “Merely Mary Ann,” the dramatic romance that will mark

Janet Gaynor’s first screen appearance since he roperation in Honolulu for appendicitic. Miss Loftus, for 25 years one of the most popular stars of New York and London, first was on the screen in the Fox Movietone production, “East Lynee,” in which she shares honours with Ann Harding, Clive Brook, and Conrad Nagel. She has just completed a part in ‘Doctor’s Wives,” with Warner Baxter and Joan Bennett.

Jack Oakie has completed camera work on his latest Paramount comedy, tentatively titled “The Boy Wonder,” and based on the stage comedy success, “June Moon.” In this the star is supported by Francis Dee, June Mac Cloy, and Wynne Gibson in the feminine leads, Harry Akst, Harold Waldridge, and Sam Hardy. The story deals with a small-town youth with song-writing ambitions and afraid of girls. Theo Dreisler’s Pulitzer Prize novel, “An American Tragedy,” has been selected by Paramount as the next directorial assignment for Josef von Sternberg, who directed Marlene Dietrich in “Morocco” and “Dishonoured.” Phillips Holmes, who has just completed a role opposite Nancy Carroll in “Stolen Heaven,’’ is announced for the leading role. Within six months, Dorothy Lee, the screen’s most popular comedienne, featured opposite Wheeler and Woolsey in a handful of the productions, rises to stellar heights. The girl who played ingenue lead in “Rio Rita” and stepped overnight into the featured player class, now finds herself at the peak of her swift career. Already she has appeared in “Rio Rita,” “The Cuckoos,” “Dixiana,” “Half Shot at Sunrise,” and “Hook, Line, and Sinker.” In every one she scored a personal success. Her work was awarded by William Le Baron, vice-president in charge of Radio’ Pictures' production, with star ranking. Maureen O’Sullivan, a little Irish girl who was lifted from a quiet dinner in a Dublin restaurant to a career in Hollywood because Frank Borzage happened to be in the same restaurant and liked the tilt of her nose, has left for her native heath on the Europa, says the “New York Times.” When she arrived some sixteen months ago, fresh from a London convent, her mother accompanied her. Last week she arrived in New York with Mrs Joseph Reilly, but she sailed alone—firmly and even a trifle beligerently alone. Miss O’Sullivan is the daughter of Major Charles O’Sullivan and I.lrs O’Sullivan, of Sainsbury. Killarney.

Typically Irish in temperament and appearance, she is a brunette, with blue eyes and rosy cheeks. She speaks with a rich brogue and a native wit which London, Hollywood, and Paris combined have only slightly softened. Mr. Borzage was in Ireland directing exterior “shots” for a picture. Maureen, back from the Convent of the Sacred Heart in London, lived quietly with her parents, driving about in a small car and journeying now and again to Dublin, eleven miles away, to shop—or to attend the Metropqle Theatre and dance at the Plaza Restaurant. At the Metropole she saw American talking pictures. At the Plaza she heard the only modern Jazz orchestra in Dublin.

Elaborate preparations are being made for the development of a large part of the site of the British Empire Exhibition at Wembley as a film centre in rivalry to Elstree, says the “NewsChronlcle.” The negotiations have been conducted at Hollywood by Mr. Ralph Pugh, who formulated plans for the production of films on a big scale at Wembley some years ago, but whose efforts to establish a British authors’ film company were not crowned with success. Members of the trust are likely to include Mr. Samuel Courtauld, Mr Claude Goddard, Mr. Philip Ernest Hill, and Mr. Hugh Reeves. Three of the seven directors of the company are to be Americans, including Mr. Arthur Hopkins, the New York stage producer. Mr. R. H. Gillespie, of Moss Empires, whose (?hief theatre is the London Hippodrome, is reported t-o be one of the British directors. The idea is to make films in English, French, German, and Italian, and there will be American film supervisors, directors, and stars, as well as British directors and plays. It is said that the new company is endeavour-

ing to secure George Arliss as one of its first stars. The acquisition of 15 acres at Wembley by Anglo-American films does not affect in any way the Wembley Stadium, the “News-Chron-icle” learns. One or more of the buildings erected for the British Empire Exhibition, it is understood, may be utilised as studios. Associated Sound Film Productions, which is under Anglo-German control, has been making films on part of the exhibition ground at Wembley for some time past. This company is a development of British Talking Pictures.