GIFTED NORWEGIAN ACTRESS

Wanganui Chronicle, 17 January 1948, Page 8

GIFTED NORWEGIAN ACTRESS

Only after six years in Hollywood was the talented Norwegian star, Signe Hasso, given a role befitting her —this was in “The House in 92nd Street.” She arrived in the United States in 1940 after repeated and increasingly urgent pleas from the movie magnates. Then for two years she never faced a camera. She could review her constant work in Swedish films, radio and on the stage in Sweden but she was not given any acting work to do. Even when she eventually got before a camera, th e European star was given drab little roles in which she was required to wear a blonde wig, a point which seems to have bothered her not a little. There were four years of that The picture she really likes is the forthcoming Universal-International release, “Double Life,” a Kanin production. In this she plays opposite Ronald Colman. The film is just in th e editing stage. “Everything about that play makes me enthusiastic,” she said recently, “and I remember every phase of the shooting and preparation for shooting. The thing I recall most fondly was Walter Hampden’s appearance in Hollywood to coach Ronald and me in a sequence from ‘Othello’ which was injected into the picture. I was Desdemona. “As you know Ronald Colman is one of our better movie actors, a man with a distinguished record, a man with a long list list of triumphs behind him. And I, too, may be credited with knowing something about classics. Yet both Ronald and 1 sat at the great classic actor’s feet like a couple of schoolchildren, and you may believe me when I say it was beneficial for both of us.” • * * « OFF TO LONDON The trek to London by big American names continues. Now it’s Spike Jones, who has been booked for six week> by the Palladium. Jones and his band will receive 1N.Z.6300 a week—said to be the largest sum ever guaranteed to an American band leader. If this is yet another contract calling for payment in dollars, then it should be revised. Johnny Weissmuller is also going to England. He announces, he will swim the English Channel as soon as the weather is suitable. It sounds like a press agent’s stunt —particularly as he has signed up to swim thrice daily in a London pool in February British films are making more money than American in Havana after years of U.S. ascendancv. There is absolute confidence here that J. Arthur Rank will emerge the winner in his current financial battle. Rank has Hollywood’s respect and admiration.