OCR Text |
Show ! STAR ! DUST .Movie Radio By VIRGINIA VALE FOR months you will be hearing about the great success of the film "Stage Door," partly because it is such an entertaining picture, but more because it is proving prov-ing a turning point in the careers ca-reers of the many young actresses who appear in it. Katherine Hepburn, so long tottering totter-ing on the brink of whimsy and ob- livion, returns to the early forthright manner of her great success, "Morning Glory" and really tugs at your heartstrings. heart-strings. Ginger Rogers Rog-ers proves to be a fine dramatic actress. ac-tress. Andrea Leeds and Lucille Ball make dramatic bits stand out so effec- Katherine tively that they have Hepburn already been rewarded re-warded with leading roles. Constance Collier, for many years a great idol of the London and New York stage, proves that she can be equally effective in motion pictures. Jack Benny has every reason to be proud of his wife's motion-picture debut. In Paramount' s "This Way Please," Mary Livingstone tosses nonsensical lines about as deftly as she does on the nation's favorite air program. This picture also serves as the film debut of Fibber Fib-ber McGee and Molly, those pleasant pleas-ant homey folks of the radio, and brings back Buddy Rogers. He isn't as young and exuberant as he used to be, but he can still lead a band. Crowded as the picture is with big-time big-time favorites, two youngsters manage' man-age' to walk off with a large share of the honors. Betty Grable is a little bombshell of vivacious beauty and Rufe Davis proves to be the most hilariously-entertaining of all hillbillies hill-billies with an imitation of a man sicking his hound dogs on a pig in a potato patch. Decision on putting little Leatrice Joy Gilbert, daughter of the late John Gilbert, in the leading role of "National Velvet" is still in abeyance, abey-ance, but she Is assured a future in films. She will make her debut in "Benefits Forgot," an ambitious production in which Walter Huston will play the lead at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. With Ruth Mix, daughter of Tom Mix, starting on the first of four cowgirl pictures she will make for Grand National, this young company com-pany is assured more Westerns for release during the coming year than any other company. Tex Ritter is making eight musical Westerns for them, and Ken Maynard is coming back from his tour with the Cole Brothers circus to make eight dramatic dra-matic Westerns for them. Frances Dee retired from the screen long enough to have two babies and bring them up to the toddling tod-dling age and when she returned to play in "Souls at Sea" she was not at all sure that she wanted to go on with her career. Now, however, how-ever, she finds that working doesn't keep her away from her babies very much and she enjoys being able to swap professional studio talk with her husband, Joel McCrea. Paramount is equally enthusiastic over her return and will put her in the lead of "Dream of Love." Ernst Lubitsch, Gary Cooper and Claudette Colbert have all been marking time while Paramount officials searched for just the right actor to play a very important role in "Bluebeard's Eighth Wile." They were getting discouraged, dis-couraged, when they happened to go to a party where "The Prisoner of Zenda" was shown, and as soon as they saw Gary Cooper David Niven they chorused "That's our man." Luckily, Luck-ily, he was just on his way back from England, and Sam Goldwyn to whom he is under contract had no immediate plans for him. ODDS AND ENDS The Warner Brothers are in a frenzy because the Mauch twins are groiving so fast, they are outgrowing some scenarios written for them . . . Lionel Barrymore hai gone off to England to work in Robert Taylor's picture being filmed at Oxford . . . Norma Shearer expects to get started on filming "Marie Antoinette" any year now when she can get just the actors she wants in her supporting cast . . . Humor has it that Cary Grant will be knotcn as number one comic of the screen when "The Awful Truth" with Irene Dunne, and "Bringing Up Baby" with Katherine Hepburn are shown . . . Joan Crawford wishes that fans would write and tell her what sort of role to play next. She does not want to sing or dance, though she does both well, but will try anything elsa her fans suggest. Western Newspaper Union. |