SCREEN & STARS

Star (Christchurch), Volume LXVI, Issue 20330, 13 June 1934, Page 3

SCREEN & STARS

Q.EORGE A RUSS has just signed an agreement with Gaumont-Brit-ish to make a talking picture, and lie has been asked to play the part of Joseph Chamberlain, great Empirebuilder and great personality. The actor will receive

more than £30,000. lie will begin work at Shepherd’s Bush on August 20. Gau- * mont-British discussed several subjects before it decided that the life of Joseph Chamwould be the most acceptable. If Arliss agrees to play the role, the company will at once seek

permission, advice, and, it is hoped, co-operation from the family of Joseph Chamberlain, particularly from his two sons. Sir Austen Chamberlain and Mr Neville Chamberlain, Chancellor of the Exchequer. The managing director of Gaumont-British, Mr C. M. Woolf, in announcing the agreement entered into, said that he aimed at the production of a talking picture which would be entirely English in character, and which would give George Arliss the opportunity to play seme great historical figure. It has long been the desire of Arliss to make a film in England, but long-term contracts have prevented his working in his native countrv. He will be largely responsible for the production. The company’s general manager of production, Michael Ballon, said that the actor would be consulted at every stage and would be allowed the same facilities at the studio as he had commanded in Hollywood. “ The success of George Arliss’s past films has been largely due to this factor,” he added, “ and we can see no reason for diverging from that practice,” Arliss will be seen here on Saturday in “ Disraeli,” his first great talking-screen success.

TOEL M’CREA and Frances Dee are determined to make their marriage a happy one. To further this end, each has agreed not to accept a screen role unless the other approves it.

IVTAREENE DIETRICH draws bigger audiences than Greta Garbo in Sweden, but the Garbo is more popular in Germany.

A RULING proposed by the censors of Delaware, U.S.A., would ban any film in which a divorced actor oi actress appeared.

JEAN HARLOW left her motor-car * outside a shop in a small Californian town recently. Within fifteen , minutes souvenir-hunters had stripped lit of every removable accessory. JYJANY PERSONS like to go to the cinema to escape from their chickens and their gardens, but Jessie Matthews, one of Britain’s most popular feminine screen stars, spends her leisure away from the Gaeimont-British studios at her home in a semi-rural district, Ilampton-on-Thames, near London. She and her husband, the comedian, Sonnie Hale, have extensive poultry interests, and take as much interest in their chickens and ducks as in their garden, where they raise—by their own labour—both flowers and i vegetables. For exerjise, which is ini dispensable to a film star, they indulge !in their share of cycling, riding for miles in the early mornings or the long twilight evenings, as well as on Sunday mornings, out into the open country where they live. A LTHOUGII he has not been in a picture since 1925, William S. Ilart still receives as much “ fan ” mail as some present-day favourites. A week never goes by that he doesn’t receive 100 letters from staunch admirers, and some weeks the number goes as high as 400. All of the letters are promptly answered, most of them by a secretary, although Hart attends to many of them himself. Some people have been writing Hart at regular' intervals for years, due perhaps to the fact that from the time of his picture beginnings in 1914 he never has failed to reply to letter writers. In those early days, before he could afford a secretary, Hart wrote his own replies in longhand. Fully 95 per cent of the writers, says a friend, urge Hart to return to the screen. B. PRIESTLEY has returned to England from Capri, where he talked over a film called “ Sing As We Go,” which he is going to write for Gracie Fields. Gracie’s holiday in Capri was a source of disturbance to some of the natives. The old coachman who drove her around every day talked to her next-door neighbours. “ ’That lady,” he said, “ I drive her <?ut every day—but she will sing. Sing . . . sing . . . she never stops. I do not say, mind you, that her voice is offensive. On the contrary, it is quite good. I wonder that.she has not thought of going on thfj stage! But she never stops. . . .” ’