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Show Star Pust 'The Bat Again k Jane Has Preference To the Bitter End I Hy Virginia Vnlo THE President's son plans to give us a mystery picture pic-ture made from one of the best mystery plays ever writtenas writ-tenas the first release of his Globe Productions. It's "The Bat," by Mary Roberts Rine-hart Rine-hart and Avery Hopwood, and has everything that a thriller should have. It was filmed by Mary Pickford'i company in 1926, and done again, as "The Bat Whispers," in 1031. Norman Foster will direct the new version. Hard on the heels of her scrap with Warner Brothers over her refusal re-fusal to appear in "Married, Pretty and Poor," Jane Bryan showed the studio that she preferred to be married, mar-ried, pretty and rich she announced her engagement to Justin W. Dart, who is general manager of a drug firm. Mickey Rooney may rank first at the box offices of motion picture theaters in this country, but in Great Britain and Ireland he comes second, sec-ond, with Deanna Durbin pushing him out of first place. She was not among the first ten in this country. If you are devoted to the story, "The Light That Failed," you'll like the picture version, which sticks to the original, even to the unhappy ending. If it's Ronald Colman, rather rath-er than the story, who's rcsponsi- A v4.? I 'i RONALD COLMAN ble for your Interest In the picture, you'll enjoy It hugely, for he gives an excellent performance. So do Walter Huston, Dudley Dlgges, and Ida Lupino. Miss Lu-plno Lu-plno has had a hard time of It in Hollywood; she was put into ingenue parts and kept there; now that, at last, she had been given a chance to show what she could do with a real role, she had made the most of it. Hers is rather like the one In "Of Human Bondage" that established Bette Davis as a dramatic actress. Miss Lupino's performance is good enough to do as much for her. No longer can she be thought of as just one of those pretty blondes who are so numerous in the picture-making metropolis. If you're interested In the present activities of former radio favorites, here's news of some of them. Jimmy Jim-my Melton is now known as James Melton, and is a concert singer. Morton Downey wound up his summer sum-mer engagement at the World's fair and followed it with an equally successful suc-cessful one in a Hollywood night club. Singin' Sam is making money by making recordings. Jessica Dragonnette makes occasional occa-sional appearances on the air and when you see "Gulliver's Travels" you'll hear her voice. Vera Van, Leah Ray and Annette Hcnshaw have retired. Gene Antry, the singing screen star who is Publio Cowboy No. L heads a new western series from "The Double M Ranch" over the Columbia network each Sunday. Incidentally, In-cidentally, did you know that Gene was discovered by the beloved Will Rogers? Rogers stopped at a small town In Oklahoma to forward his syndicated column; Gene, the telegraph tele-graph operator, was singing a western west-ern ballad. Rogers advised him to capitalize on his talents and a little more than a year later Gene Autry was a popular radio and recording artist. Del Courtney, who features Can- did Camera music over NBC, has borrowed an idea from the movies in his presentation of "previews" of his forthcoming programs. Before concluding his broadcasts, he plays a few bars of some of the new tunes to be featured on the next program. It's a novel idea, and will probably be widely copied by bandleaders who don't hesitate to imitate their more successful brethren. ODDS AND ENDS The New York Film Critics picked "Wuthering Heights'' as 1939's best picture ... It's a little more than twenty-six years since Cecil B. DeMille, Samuel Gold-wyn Gold-wyn and Jesse Lasky began filming 'The Squaw Man," the first motion picture made in Hollywood. (Released by Western Newspaper Union.) |