If Margaret Sullavan Universal’s leading lady player does not make a mark for herself in her next picture she has no one to blame but Margaret Sullavan. In “Little Man What Now” she was bogged down by one of the sappiest “good” scripts to come from the West Coast but her next venture will be a picturization of Margaret Ayer Barnes’s “Within This Present.” R. C Sherriff, one of the screen’s best adapters will write the film version and James Whale will do the directing. There is just enough sentiment in the book to make it readily adaptible for film purposes. I do hope Douglas Montgomery is also given a role in “Within This Present.” He owes some atonement for his work in “Little Man.”
RKO HEEDS THE CENSOR
Nearly worried into a panic RKO very gingerly announces a dozen new pictures for the Fall in the following manner:
“Following the settled policy of RKO Radio Pictures, as laid down in President B. B. Kahane’s recent ultimatum demanding censor-proof pictures, the studio’s new production line-up calls for twelve specials to go before the cameras in August, each of which is airtight from a censorship angle.
The twelve are: “By Your Leave,” with Skeets Gallagher; “Anne of Green Gables,” with Anne Shirley and Tom Brown; “The Little Minister,” starring Katharine Hepburn, with John Beal; “Let’s Get Married” and “Radio City Revels,” starring Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers; “Sea Girl;” “Romance in Manhattan,” starring Francis Lederer; “Kentucky Kernels,” with Wheeler and Woolsey; “Dangerous Corner,” with Virginia Bruce, Betty Furness and Erin O’Brien-Moore; “Wednesday’s Child,” with Frankie Thomas and Karen Morley; “Laddie Boy” and “The Silver Streak.”
HECHT MACARTHUR AND CAYLOR
It doesn’t pay to read the press releases too readily. If you do, you find disillusionment is your portion. Just a few weeks ago I wrote that Rose Caylor, wife of Ben Hecht was busily engaged working on a scenario for her husband and Charles MacArthur which would be used as that duo’s second picture and now I receive the following:
“Ben Hecht and Charles Mac-Arthur have emerged from a two-week retirement in Nyack, N. Y., to announce that they have completed the script for their second film production for Paramount and that camera work probably will be started before the end of the month. Jimmy Savo will have the leading role.”
SOME OF THOSE ODDS
Imagine anti-Semitism in the moving picture industry? RKO has a Jewish president, Paramount, United Artists, Universal, M-G-M, Warners and Columbia Pictures are controlled by Jews. Yet I am told that it is more difficult for a Jewish boy or girl to find a place in the business and publicity offices of one company. In fact there was a cleanup and most of the sweeping was done at the expense of the Jewish help….
Nat Pendleton, who prides himself on being the “dumbest-looking character actor in Hollywood” is a university graduate with an engineering degree. He speaks four foreign languages, is an authority on economics and holds a chess championship….
Helen Hayes, according to press reports, was lured into playing her first stage part as a child because the role called the eating of a piece of cake at each performance….
Charles Butterworth, the comedian, is said to have a complete library collection of practically every joke and book of humor published in English…. So that’s the reason!
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
