Cinema: Busy Bodies

Vivien Leigh and Laurence Olivier, whose “perfect romance” was marred only by the fact that each was married to someone else, finally married each other last week (see p. 38). Mickey Rooney received a new contract from his studio allowing him $100 a week for pin money, $900 for living expenses, $1,000 for his old age. Pint-sized Carl Laemmle Jr. found his stretching exercises had added an inch to his height. Orson Welles continued directing his film Citizen Kane from a wheel chair after falling down stairs and cracking his ankle. George Washington Peter, a ring-tailed monkey, had to take out an A. F. R. A. union card so he could chatter monkey gibberish over a radio show called Little Old Hollywood. Chatter-chirping Louella Parsons discov ered that pretty Virginia Bruce (Mrs. J. Walter Ruben) was expectinga “little stranger” in six months.

With these and other problems in hand, Hollywood was a busy town last week. Fifty productions were in the works at eleven studios in preparation for the new cinema season which is heralded each autumn as “Motion Pictures’ Greatest Year.” Publicity men beat out stories explaining that 1940 would see a swing from heavy drama to relaxing comedy and musicals. At Fox, Darryl Zanuck wound up The Great Profile, in which John Barrymore does a savage satire on his scrambled life. Frank Capra was te diously struggling over his latest comedy, Meet John Doe. Comics Jack Benny and Fred Allen were immortalizing their radio feud on celluloid at the Paramount lot.

M. G. M. had the Marx Brothers bouncing around on one stage, Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy trilling to one another near by. Warner Brothers pigeonholed their artistic aspirations by canceling Paul Muni’s contract, concentrating on such slam-bang hell-raisers as Errol Flynn, Humphrey Bogart, John Garfield.

Hollywood was going irresponsible professionally—and for good box-office reasons—but privately life was getting relatively earnest. Sidney Skolsky spotted Jimmy Roosevelt spreading charm around a Hollywood party unconscious of a Willkie button slyly pinned to the back of his coat. Walter O’Keefe, a New York comedian, arrived in town to organize a Republican committee with bright-eyed Robert Montgomery as chairman. Democratic National Committeewoman Helen Gahagan (songstress wife of Melvyn Douglas) was rounding up Roosevelt votes with the help of sinister Edward G. Robinson, serene Douglas Fairbanks Jr. National defense got its call with the arrival from Washington of prying Leo Rosten (alias Leonard Q. Ross), essayist and humorist, who was recently appointed “special consultant” to the consumers’ division of the NDAC. Rosten may soon be officially stationed in Hollywood, where he has spent the last 18 months preparing a treatise on the movie industry. But this time he came to let the studio heads know what the Government would like them to do. Quickly announced were two forthcoming films on conscription—Yankee Doodle Goes to Plattsburg, You’re in the Army Now.

When war broke out year ago, the duty of the able-bodied members of Hollywood’s British colony received plenty of attention. Some thought they should hurry home to enlist, as did handsome, mustachioed David Niven. Loudest blast of the debate came from London last week, where British Producer Michael Balcon snorted “deserters” at the “scores of producers, directors, writers, artists and technicians who have migrated to Hollywood and Manhattan since Munich.” Next day came Hollywood’s concrete answer: $6,-000,000 worth of British talent, including such performers as Madeleine Carroll, Laurence Olivier, Vivien Leigh, Charles Laughton, Basil Rathbone and Greer Garson, would star in the production of a picture called The Rafters Ring, 75% of whose proceeds would be donated to British war relief.

It was a busy week.