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Show Shorts For directing the screen version ver-sion of William L. White's "They Were Expendable," Comdr. John Ford will receive the highest sal- play and then come back to Hol- lywood with it, to produce and act the principal role. MGM as finally reached the decision to continue the Hardy Family series without Mickey Rooney, who is now with the Army Ar-my overseas. The other members of the cast, Lewis Stone, Fay Hol-den Hol-den and Sara Haden, will appear in the Tarkington story. - Martha Stewart, attractive singer and dancer at the Copaca-bana Copaca-bana in New York, is to have one of the leads in "Three Little Girls In Blue," a musical to be produced by William Learon, for 20th Century-Fox. There's to be a sequel to that popular musical, "Two Girls And A Sailor" with the leads again in the hands of June Allyson, Gloria DeHaven and Van Johnson, ly. everybody, "Going My Way", Paramount's heart-warming story of two Catholic priests, and its stars, Bing Crosby and Barry Fitzgerald, Fitz-gerald, were nominated for gilt Oscars by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Fitzgerald Fitz-gerald became the first actor in Academy history to be nominated for both "the best performance by an actor" and "the best performance per-formance by a supportinng actor" in "Going My Way." nvy yet given a Hollywood fllm director for one picture, a reported report-ed $200,000 from MGM. Ford, it is said, will not keep any of it, j owevcr, but will use it to set up a rehabilitation and benefit fund for the 168 members of the avy group, former Hollywood studio technicians, techni-cians, now in various war theaters thea-ters on Navy filming missions. "They Were Expendable" is to be filmed with Navy cooperation coopera-tion and is expected to cost in excess ex-cess of $2,500,000. The story will hew closely to fact, with little fictionalizing. fic-tionalizing. The picture is now be- I ing filmed off the coast of Florida and has Robert Montgomery, now on the inactive reserve list of the Navy, in the role of PT Boat Squadron skipper Lieut, (now Comdr.) John Bulkeley. Believing that there are enougii music lovers in the country coun-try to make it profitable, Metro plans to launch a program of experimental ex-perimental short subjects dealing with symphonic and operatic music. mus-ic. The first picture, to be titled, "Musical Masterpieces, will feature fea-ture three short symphonic pieces whilie the second, "Mr. and Mrs. Opera at Home," will use the backstage of a major opera house as a background. Constance Bennett is about to wear herself out hopping from an office to a stage. Constance is filling fill-ing the capacity of producer and co-star (with Gracie Fields) of the screen version of Etta Shib-er's Shib-er's "Paris Underground." Constance's Con-stance's greatest ambition, however, how-ever, is to appear in a Broadway |