ACTRESS EXPLAINS.

Star (Christchurch), Volume XLIV, Issue 193, 15 August 1931, Page 10

ACTRESS EXPLAINS.

Big Contract Refused byEvelyn Laye. Evelyn Laye indulged in some straight talking, says a writer in the London “ Daily Mail,” when I questioned her about her avowed refusal of a Hollywood offer of £150,000 for a fiveyears’ contract, quoted in an interview with a newspaper representative. “ For some time a mystery seems to have been created by certain people about my refusals to go back to Hollywood,” Miss Laye said. “ Actually, there is no mystery at all, and I do not want people to get the impression that I have become 4 high-hatted * and generally above myself.

“ What this latest offer amounted to was this: I was asked by a big Hollywood film organisation to sign S contract which guaranteed me a year’s engagement at £20,000. They had the option to renew the contract each year up to a period of five years, my salary being raised each year, so that, if I remained, I should at the end of that time have earned £150,000. “ However, there would have been nothing to prevent them dispensing with my services after the first year. In any case, the offers I have received all entail my living for forty weeks out of the year in Hollywood and, frankly, i I am too fond of home to want to leave it and my friends for so long a period. “ I am honestly not being ‘ stuck-up ' or anything like that, but I have had to fight my way to the front since I was a kid of fifteen—and I do not want to risk letting myself* down by rushing at anything and everything which comes along. That is why, for the present, I prefer to be out of a job.” Many Employees. The Paramount studios in Hollywood furnish employment for approximately 2000 workers.

Exquisite Romance. The exquisite romance, “Viennese Nights,” which will begin a return season at Everybody’s Theatre on Monday, is the work of Sigmund Romberg and Oscar Hammerstein 11, who have created many glamorous and melodious entertainments. The story is one of great tenderness, the theme being the deathlessness of beauty, and the settings are all filmed in natural colours. The glamour of old Vienna, told so often in song and story, is depicted with stirring vitality, and marching troupes, gay ladies, street gamins and ample fraus. are all seen in the flickering golden light of leaves blowing, horses drawing ancient vehicles, and

gay roysterers. The action covers a period of fifty years, and the romance is built about the fate of a girl who falls in love with a poor musician, but is ’ forced to marry a rich officer by hei* ‘ father. j To Play In Talkie. 1 Ethel Levy, the one-time London musical comedy actress, has been signed by* Radio Pictures to play opposite Lowell Sherman in a talkie called “ High Stakes.’* For England? American newspapers report that Harold Lloyd is soon to visit England and it is possible that he will make 2* picture in that country*.