Kankakee Valley Post, Volume 9, Number 50, DeMotte, Jasper County, 2 November 1939 — Star Dust [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Star Dust

JT ay Back in Movies JT ar Cramps Hughes Thomas in Screen Debut

By Virginia Vale

IF THE current crop of young Americans doesn’t know all about American history it won’t be the fault of the movies. Producers are fairly falling over each other in the scramble to stake a claim to a slice of it; hafdly a day passes that another historical picture isn’t announced. Though it hardly seems possible, “Hollywood Cavalcade” ‘is history too, the history of the movies, released for the industry’s fiftieth anniversary. The heroine, played by Alice Faye, is a combination of all those golden-curled girls who used to act before the cameras (and as a rule most of them over-acted), and Don Ameche plays the hero, who is a number of those historic leading men rolled into one. But the hit of the picture, so far as a lot of people are concerned, is the lads who show us how slapstick comedy used to be played. Buster Keaton, Chester Conklin, Ben Turpin, Hank Mann, Eddie Collins, Jimmy Finlayson—there they are again, throwing custard pies with vim and vigor, staging a comedy treat for

the old-timers who used to laugh at them and the new generation who never saw them before. All hail the Keystone cops! And be it said for Alice Faye that she can take a custard pie in the face and come right up for more. Howard Hughes is returning to the picture business, since the war has cramped his style where round-the-world flights are concerned. And he wants a new boy and girl team. He has shown that he’s a genius when it comes to discovering and developing talent; he launched Jean Harlow, in “Hell’s Angels,” you’ll remember, and made Paul Muni a motion picture star overnight in “Scarface.” He’s shown, too, that he knows how to make pictures. During the long stretch when “Hell’s Angels” was considered just a rich man’s folly, people who had served their time at picture-making, predicted that he’d never get back one-tenth of the money that he was pouring into it. It’s still being shown and still making money. John Charles Thomas is going into the movies. Remember the little difference of opinion he had concerning his radio appearances, because he wouldn't sing if he couldn’t conclude with “Good night, Mother”? He will sing in the picture in which he makes his screen debut. “Kingdom Come,” whose story deals with American folk music. It will be made by Producers Corporation of America, a new motion-pic-ture company.

It’s going to seem strange to have Nelson Eddy permanently off that Sunday night radio program; a lot of his admirers will never be reconciled to his departure. But he feels that, what with concerts, recordings and work in the movies, he hasn't time for regular radio work. . Edward G. Robinson is all in favor of realism on the radio and in his pictures, but it was almost too much for him at one of his broadcasts not long ago. The script called for the sound effect of a man being hit over the head with a chair. The sound effects man was to smash the chair against the wall (try it sometime and see if it sounds like the real thing). The chair slipped, hit an actor over the head, and put him in the Hollywood emergency hospital. ODDS AND ENDS —After having it on and off the schedule since 1936, Metro has finally put “Not Too Narrow, Not Too Deep” into production, with Joan Crawford and Clark Gable . . . Paramount is offering the public a new romantic team in “Moon Over Burma"—they're Patricia Morrison and Robert Preston . . . “Vera Vague,’* of the Charlie McCarthy program, is played by Barbara Jo Allen, whom you hear as “Beth Holly" on “One Man's Family* . . . Batch for more and better (we hope) comedies on the screed from now an; motion picture producers are on the I uni for stories that will help the public to forget the war. (Released by Western Newspaper Union.)

ALICE FAYE