CHATTER ABOUT FILMS AND FILM STARS
By LEDO
At the Queen's and Alhambra to- day
Bob Sherwood's Pulitzer Prize play was a strong attack on war, on jingoism, on dictator egomaniacs -and it pictured, from a lonely mountain resort in the Italian Alps, how a strange and variegated assortment of guests re-acted to the sudden outbreak of a new world conflagration. Now the location is Nowhere in brief, the mythical- kingdom idea carried to a new high -and I mean high. The natives speak Esperanto, the film is a guarded plea for peace. Since Mr. Sherwood himself made the screen adaptation, I take it he approves of his own changes.
remains
The underlying story pretty much unaltered. In what was the small Hotel Monte Gabriele you still find Harry Váň, honky- tonk vaudeville entertainer, and his travelling troupe, Les Blondes, otherwise six dancing girls. Pre- sent, too, is a Russian countess, the
Kitty
(Rojdated
by The Bell Syndicate, Ine.)
6-8
You no longer are of the young- er generation if a pair of bedroom slippers look better to you than a pair of dancing shoes.
1
mistress of a prosperous interna-in Omaha, years before. Here, on tional munitions and poison-gas the peak in Bedlam, the two face seller. Besides the dealer in death, the great cataclysm. · there is a German scientist anxious
Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne to get back to his laboratories, -a French pacifist confused by the played Idiot's Delight for a year on Broadway. Now Clark Gable and world's collapse, and a motley as- sortment of others. In the midst of Norma Shearer have the roles, the the din of aerial bombs, Van sud-first time they have played together denly realises he knows the "coun-since Strange. Interlude in 1932. tess." She is a phony, a one-time Shearer wears everything from vaudevillian he had cared for, back spangled tights to extravagant
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AT THE KING'S MASTO-DAY
THE CHINA MAIL, JULY 15, 1939.
Though I gasped with admiration at the ingenuity of the plot of "Thanks for Everything," I laughed rather uneasily at this elaborate joke about war.
Jack Haley wins a radio advertis-- ing competition to discover Ameri- ca's Average Man.
Adolphe Menjou, head of the ad- vertising agency, is approached by a Foreign Power, who wants to know if and when the average man would be prepared to go to war.
By means of poison Ivy and a trick, Haley is persuaded that he has a contagious, disease and mits to quarantine.
sub-
news-
Faked radio messages and paper headlines tell him that Ameri- ca has been insulted and her citizens have been beaten up by nasty foreigners.
"REVENGE!”
read magazine in France, recently published on three full pages the results of a vote held amongst film reporters.
the Warner stars won by far greatest number of "firsts" in the poll. Here are the results:-
.
Best Actress-Bette Davis.
Best. Actor-Paul Muni,
Actress with most sex-appeal- Ann Sheridan.
Most intelligent actress--Bette Davis.
Most intelligent actors-James, Cagney, Paul Muni.
** **
George Raft will begin his new contract with Warner Bros.
Co-
| starring with James Cagney in "In-
visible Stripes."
*
*
EK
He says, "We gotta keep out of war,"
"Coney Island" is the latest addi- Even when he is told that Ameri-tion to the Warners program for ca has declared war he is not pre-
1939-40, the cast includes Pat pared to fight-not until he learns O'Brien, Humphrey Bogart, Claude that enemy planes have attacked the
Rains, Marie Wilson, Gloria Dick- coast and killed thousands of civili-
son and Maxie Rosenbloom.
ans.
Then he cries, "Revenge!" After that he rushes out into the
* * ** Male Lead in "Marie Lloyd"
streets and calls on the citizens to story about the English music hall start reprisals against the murder- star, to be produced at RKO by ous enemy-and everybody laughs Herbert Wilcox, goes to Cary Grant, Eventually he is Anna Neagle, the British player, like anything. taken to a lunatic asylum, where the has the title role. hoax is finally revealed.
Jack Oakie, Arleen Whelan, and Binnie Barnes complete a quintet of humorists.
C
HOLLYWOOD LOWDOWN gowns by Adrian (one clinging white one aroused Czar Hays, they say), and she sings and actually Warner Bros. Stars Win Top
Honours In French Poll swings by her teeth in an aerial act. And Gable, who never danced
The French magazine "Le before, does Shuffle Off to Buffalo and a Chaleston, vocalises Puttin' | Match", most popular and widely On the Ritz, affects a brash variety front, a straw hat and a cane.'
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OFF THE RECORD
W. C. Fields who was seen locally. in Universal Films "You Can't Cheat an Honest Man" is recover- ing from a pneumonia attack in Pasadena Sanitarium.
"A Chump at Oxford” re-uniting Laurel & Hardy in their four-reel shorts is in production at Roach Studios.
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