OCR Text |
Show till Fl I I I I TirHu iwwi t I I ' While Waller Winchell is away, I thit month, hit column trill be con- ducted by $uet columnists. By JACK LAFT , Coa$t-to-Coasting: Herman Shumlln, Broadway-made-director, now a Hollywood wage-slave wage-slave (at what wagei) is hot for realism. For a scene in a film with Charles Boyer and Lauren Bacall, he wanted a photo of a bullet hitting hit-ting a 'wall and he wanted it authoritatively au-thoritatively authentic. At 2 o'clock In the morning, he got four Warner lot cops to stand off and pop their 44's at a studio wall and had each shot shot from several angles. . . . He still didn't get Just what he was sfter. . . . But came the dawn, H. M. Warner sent for his whole force and demanded to know what crackpot had been shooting up his bungalow? It's right past the wall. The place looked like Berlinl Mike Romanoff, the Great Pretender, Pre-tender, who now owns the most prosperous cafe in California, has won his naturalization papers, thus disproving canards that his Imperial Highballness was born in Brooklyn. Mike is a native of London. Strangely, his true name is Romanoff, Roman-off, which gave him his original inspiration in-spiration to "adopt" the czarist clan. He says he will definitely not change the monicker now to Mike Stalin. ... Dr. Irving Berman, Hollywood Hol-lywood eye specialist, has it figured out that persons with normal sight should sit four times the height of the screen from the screen. Bring your own tape-measure! The Commies in and around the movie industry have set up such an organised and agonised agon-ised howl against a proposed Red probe that their activities are accentuating the positive far more than another official Investigation In-vestigation is likely to. That Hollywood Hol-lywood Is crummy with every shade of bolshy lovers Is obvious to anyone who can aee or hear. A recent California legislative survey turned up conditions even more malodorous than surface symptoms had Indicated. Stars, producers, execntlves with no understanding of what the Russian Rus-sian system means plug for it Crimson propaganda creeps Into costly films. Anyone who thinks democracy and a republic are pretty sweet Is a fascist Isolationist; Isola-tionist; anyone who thinks we're lend-leasing like fools Is a Tory reactionary. The victory of the radicals In Britain was toasted and celebrated In mansions and swank cafes In the community which glorifies the Soviets and squawks about high U. S. Income taxes in the same breath! Tim Gayle has left Fred Waring exploitation to start another musical mag, "Preview." He formerly published pub-lished "The Baton." He was going to call his new periodical "Finale," but Westbrook Pegler, whose ad-I ad-I vice he asked, didn't like that snid it sounded pessimistic. Peg also said in his letter: "I think anyone who starts a business enterprise today to-day on his own money deserves either a medal or a scholarship in I Matteawan. Anything that old Sam I doesn't take away from you, in the I improbable event that you make a dollar In the first place, will be taken by the unions and the lawyers whose services will be necessary to keep you out of prison from day to day." And Peg advises sgalnst pessimism! Hollywood Is where: A fortune rides on the turn of ankle or the tilt of a nose; everything is so Irresponsible Irrespon-sible and goofy that a dozen new millionaires emerge every year; everybody wears slacks and owns race-horses; biggies loves yesmen and hire high-priced monitors to stop them from doing what they'd love to do; everyone denies that the movies are Just entertainment and Insists the screen ts a medium ot education, culture, enlightenment and patriotism; and the cast and crew of "The Kid from Brooklyn" put In 48,400 man-hours In a prize fight sequence that runs S minutes, 14 seconds, when you see It Connie Bennett Is back again, Just a trouper on the payroll. Her ambitious ambi-tious venture as a producer came rather a cropper. . . . "Paris Underworld." Under-world." a great story, was washed out with VE Day. But Connie had fun while It lasted ordering people around, refusing this, turning down that one Constance picnic. - Freddie Steele, ex-mlddlewelghl champ, couldn't get East for the "Story of G.I. Joe" premiers, but Pvt Robert Mitchum (who plays tht csptsln) got travel priority because he's in the army. Both are film finds and will be heard from plentj more. . . . Faye Emerson Is heartsick. heart-sick. A few months ago she blazed up as Elliot Roosevelt's bride, daughter-in-law of the President. Sines then, she's hud some tough publicity breaks and the Roosevelt name no longer works magic.' Soon Elliot will be back In private life. |