FILMS AND STARS.

Waipawa Mail, Volume LXVIII, Issue 31, 20 November 1939, Page 4

FILMS AND STARS.

PERSONALITIES ON THE SCREEN COMING ATTRACTIONS. A critic questioned Gary Cooper’s eligibility to play the young British aristocrat “Beau” in “Beau Geste.” The critic said: “Gary is as American as the buffalo. He was great in ‘The Plainsman’ and greater still as the soldier of fortune in 1 The General Died at Dawn,’ but if ‘Beau Geste’ is English to the n-th degree, and Gary is equally American, how can the perfect combination be claimed?” Cooper was amused, and said, “Well, you are certainly getting to he sticklers for realism here. No one minded me being Peter Ibbetson or Marco Polo, so why this furore over Beau Geste? Besides part of my early life was spent in England.” This last statement from Gary amazed everyone, because the popular conception of his early life vision him as a Montana ranch boy. At the age of nine Gary was taken to England and attended school at Dunstable, in Bedfordshire, for more than four years.

Red-haired women have a better chance than blondes or brunettes for screen success. A poll of the ranking stars in Hollywood reveals that the red-heads now “head” the list. Gentlemen used to prefer blondes, but a register of the titian-tressed stars reads like a Blue Book of the film colony. Rouben Mamoulian, veteran directors, has his own theory for the ascendancy of redheads. He directed one of them, Barbara Stanwyck, in Columbia’s dramatic “Golden Boy,” in which Adolphe Menjou and Hill Hidden portray the leading roles. ‘ ‘ They possess an intense emotional personality that registers in front of the camera,” Mamoulian asserts. That fire, properly controlled, is ideal for motion pictures where reserve is one of the first lessons learned by actors and actresses.”' He added that on the screen the fire becomes clearly evident. It adds an appeal to characterisations, conveying a feeling of repressed emotionalism to the audience.

Universal is making elaborate plans for its next Edgar Bergen-Charlie McCarthy production, which it is planned to atari soon. Tentatively titled “Charlie McCarthy, Detective,” it will be produced and directed by Frank Tuttle, who completed for Universal, “I Stole a Million,” co-starring George Raft and Claire Trevor. Edward Eliscu is writing the screen play. Mortimer Snerd, another chip off the Bergen block, who scored with movie audiences in “You Can’t Cheat An Honest Man,” will receive special treatment in “Charlie McCarthy, Detective. ” By popular demand of exhibitors and fans, Mortimer will have a juicy role in the new Bergen production. A cast of important players will be lined up to surround Bergen, McCarthy, and Snerd in this picture, which will be made on a lavish scale.

Few Hollywood actresses arrive at a studio with a more watchful escort (or with more complete insurance protection) than does the £7OOO chinchilla evening wrap worn by Loretta Young in “Eternally Yours.” At the close if each day’s filming, the valuable garment is returned to the vaults of a Hollywood furrier for safe keeping, and whenever the day’s schedule requires its use, two armed guards bring it to the studio. In this Walter Wanger production, Miss Young has the role of Anita, wife of the “great Arturo,” a master magician, played by David Niven. Arthur loves his wife, but has a somewhat light-heart-ed view of the obligations of marriage. Because he is accustomed to doing everything with a lavish hand and materialising everything from a woman to a lighted cigarette out of thin air, his conception of a small gift to divert his wife’s attention from his pecadillos strikes a new high with each digression.

Henry King is a man who loves realism. When the director came to handle his assignment on Darryl F. Zanuck’s “Stanley and Livingstone,” starring Spencer Tracy, Nancy Kelly, and Richard Greene, he took great • care to present the great adventure with fidelity to fact. “Stanley’s life was thrilling enough without adding any fiction to it,” said King. “We are going to begin in the days of the sixties when he was a hard-boiled newspaper reporter covering the Indian wars of the West for James Gordon Bennett’s old ‘New York Herald,’ and take him on his daring expedition into Africa to show the change in his character as he came under the kindly influence of Livingstone, the great missionary-explorer, whom he had been sent to find. “We are ruthlessly eliminating everything that does not conform to Stanley’s own diary and his other accounts of his adventures.”

Myrna Loy and her husband, Arthur Homblow, junr., Paramount producer, have just returned to Hollywood after making some kind of travelling record. They covered 15,000 miles in thirty days, such a hurried vacation jaunt being caused by the fact that Mr Homblow had to get back to Paramount to approve of “The Cat and the Canary,” a new Bob Hope-Paulette Goddard picture which his unit has produced. This is how the Hornhlows made the trip: They travelled from Hollywood to New York by air, to Paris aboard the Normandie, to Stockholm and Oslo by air, through Norway by automobile and water, from Bergen to Newcastle by ship, to London by train, hack to New York aboard the fast Normandie, and on to Hollywood by ’plane.