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Show STAGESCREEN&ADIO Released by Western Newspaper Union. By VIRGINIA VALE CASTING Janet Blair m a co-starring role in "The Fatnilous Dorseys" was a smart move on the part of Producer Charles R. Rogers. The role is that of a beautiful girl with singing and dancing talent who's a neighbor of the Dorseys in Pennsylvania. Pennsylva-nia. Well Janet hails from Altoona, Pa., and. emerged into the limelight as a bard singer before coming to Hollywood. Incidentally, the Dorseys say it's lucky they were I such fighters, because otherwise they j might not have been so successful. I They worked together as long as J they could, trying to direct one band jointly. The break came. Tommy went his way alone, Jimmy went his result, two top-notch bands. Tom Conway is fast becoming the top whodunit actor in show business. I He plays "Sherlock Holmes" on I ABC Saturday nights, and has ust completed his tenth mystery pic- TOM CONWAY ture, "The Falcon's Adventure." If Basil Rathbone carries out his plan to forsake the screen, Conway may be chosen to succeed him as the cinema "Sherlock." And all without trading on his relationship to his brother, George Sanders. Kay Gorcey, wife of Groucho Marx, has been signed to appear j with her husband m a comedy dance routine for the Sam Coslow produc-1 produc-1 tion, "Copacabana," a forthcoming i United Artists release, with Carmen Miranda, Andy Russell, Steve Cochran Coch-ran and Gloria Jean. 0 Ken Niles, announcer for "Suspense," "Sus-pense," has been signed to play the role of the attorney in Robert Milchum's RKO picture, "Out of the Past." You may be familiar with the story under the really good original origi-nal title, which was "Build My Gallows Gal-lows High." Lowell Thomas was all set to make teaching his life work, till he took a trip to Alaska and made some unusual films of primitive mining communities. Later, teaching at Princeton, he lectured a few times, using his films as illustrations. It proved to be so profitable that he abandoned teaching, and he's been traveling the world and getting paid lor it ever since, Andrew Toombs, character actor who crashed films because of his bald head, has played more than 200 bald-head roles m pictures. But he gets the break of a lifetime m Warners' War-ners' Technicolor musical, "My Wild Irish Rose" wears a flowing head of hair, appropriately parted m the middle, for his role of a bartender of the Gay Nineties. Incidentally, Dennis Den-nis Morgan's doing road work to keep in trim for the picture; he hasn't done a strenuous vocal chore since "The Desert Song," and finds singing more taxing than merely making love. Chet Lauck and Tuffy Goff ("Lum" and "Abner") have a new protege. She's Ruth Parrot, who played a lady barber on their program. Her Interested 20th Cen- tury-Fox talent scouts, and she landed land-ed a role in "Mother Wore Tights." Now Chet and Tuffy say they , can hardly wait for the picture to be released, so that they can begin taking tak-ing bows for discovering her in the first place. Andy Devine's been signed to a long-term contract by Republic, after aft-er being with Universal for a number num-ber of years. His latest Universal picture is Walter Wanger's "Canyon Passage," his first at Republic will be "Bells of San Angelo," a Western. Hiram Brown, producer-director of the CBS "Inner Sanctum," got the idea for the program six years ago when he heard a squeaking door in a radio sound effects department He acquired the door, and has presented pre-sented the weekly shriek and shudder shud-der show ever since I ODDS AND ENDS Betty Hut-ton's Hut-ton's baby, Lindsay Diana, has a bas- sine! lined with pink satin that was ' originally used to decorate an elaborate elabo-rate set in Betty's most recent film, ' "Perils of Pauline.". . . Martha Vick-ers Vick-ers made her screen debut as a corpse in a horror picture and now she's considered one of the most beautiful ' young women in Hollywood. . . . William Wil-liam Frambes, formerly the 209-pound fat boy in Educational comedies, is portraying por-traying a thin, love-lorn sailor in "Time Out of Mind.". , . Raymond Massey's signed for five years with Warners'. |