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Show STfiGESCRSEHaUDiO By INEZ GERHARD -LORIA SWANSON certainly never expected that her greatest great-est fame would come when she was a grandmother. Winner of the National Board of Review's award as best actress of the year, for "Sunset Boulevard," she has rocked rock-ed New York audiences back on their heels with her performance V it GLORIA SWANSON on the stage in "20th Century." One critic wrote, "It long since ceased to be startling that Gloria Swanson was amazing. It's only startling that she can go on being more amazing." Meanwhile she turns out a delightful radio program pro-gram five times a week, on Mutual. Mu-tual. And though her hair is touched touch-ed with gray, she sometimes looks young enough to be her own daughter! daugh-ter! Jose Ferrer, with his film, "Cyrano "Cy-rano de Bergerac" showing in a neighboring theatre, appears opposite op-posite Gloria in the play, giving a magnificent performance. He also directed it, so well that he could have been content with it. As a highly eccentric producer of plays he wrings every ounce of humor out of his role; as a director he did the same for the other actors. Donald Buka, featured in Howard How-ard Huges' "Vendetta," made his stage debut when he was 12 as a papier mache dragon. Fortunately the play's run was brief Donald came much too near being asphyxiated as-phyxiated at every performance. Thelma Hitter gets star billing in her eighth picture, heading the cast of "The Marriage Broker Story" (working title). She had served her time on the stage and in radio before tackling Hollywood; "Miracle on 34th. Street" was her first picture, "A Letter to Three Wives" the one that made people sit up and take notice. "All About Eve" and "The Mating Season" are her latest. NBC's Ed Herlihy has been asked by the Netherlands Chamber Cham-ber of Commerce to visit their country this summer and launch a Children's Hour on their radio network; he produced pro-duced and emcee'd NBC's Children's Chil-dren's Hour more than 10 years. Jan Murray's fan club members specialize in doing good for needy persons. They gave the Salvation Army $250 worth of clothing and toys in his name; now they're raising money for wheelchairs for veterans' hospitals. Burr Tillstrom, who manipulates the puppets on "Kukla, Fran and Ollie", the TV show for children that adults adore, is probably the highest paid puppeteer in the world. His new NBC contract is said to be for $10,000 a week! The Protestant Radio Commission Commis-sion also uses puppets in its first religious films for television. "Lamp Unto My Feet", a four-week four-week series, presents the parable of the good Samaritan, with astonishingly as-tonishingly life-like puppets. Faith Domergue's fans are really real-ly having a field day in New York. With her first two pictures playing simultaneously on Broadway, they see either "Vendetta" or "Where Danger Lives" at one theatre, then trot off to see the other one. In "Where Danger Lives" she co-stars co-stars with Robert Mitchum. "Vendetta" "Ven-detta" is a Corsican drama. Director John Farrow says he's proved that movie-goers may notice a clock in a scene but won't notice the fact that it has no hands, so he had the hands taken off all clocks in "Where Danger Lives". He claims they're a nuisance in a picture, since they must be reset to correspond to the time of each scene, just in case someone really noticed them. ODDS AND ENDS .;. . Groucho Marx really appreciates the audiences for his NBC show; he's moving from the network's studios to the Guild Theatre on Hollywood Blvd., for better facilities for the folks who like to watch him . . . Samuel Colt, son of Ethel Barry-more, Barry-more, has an important role in Paramount's "The Mating Season" . . . Kirk Douglas sings. for the first time on the screen in "Ace in the Hole"; warbles a chorus or two of "The Hut Sut Song", of all things. |
