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About Medford mail tribune. (Medford, Or.) 1909-1989 | View Entire Issue (March 22, 1936)
I: to ) 1 he Weather ,. I ill" .WT k f Looking 'em Over WITH GAIL GARDNER Five Star Motion Picture Editor , Hollywood. DEAR FOLKS: , I bumped into an odd incident out on the Fox lot this' week. It's the sort of thing that makes these childlike movie people the most superstitious aggregation in the world. . - 1 .' Director Harry Lachman was doing a sequence with Warner Oland and another actor, a blue python, in "Charlie Chan at the Circus." Oland was supposed to be asleep in a train berth. He was to awaken to find a python sitting on his stomach. The "business" was gone through a f&3 If Warner Otand In Charlie Chan at the Circus.' . Just because Henry Fonda said he'd like to get married, Hollywood's eligible bachelors are up In arms, maintaining ( that he's threatened their seclusion. Here are some of the young men determined to stay bachelors, regardless. Left, Cary Grant tried matrimony, found It a failure. In circle, Robert Taylor says, "Nix." Fred MacMurray, shown with Astrld Allwyn, whom he -frequently escorts, finds the single life is best. Next above Is Fonda, who started all the bickering. Below, with his pet terrier. Is Michael Whalen, who says, "I can't Imagine a guy wanting to get married." Right, Erlo Linden. He, too, Is dead against alliances. Henry Fonda's Yen For Married Life Upsets Belligerent Film Bachelors Because He Wants To Tie Himself Down, Fellow Players Fear They'll Have A New Fight For Freedom Mike Whalen Wants A Debate, On The Subject By Donna Risher FROM THE STUDIOS AND SOCIAL CENTERS OF HOLLYWOOD By Jane couple of times and Director Lachman made sev eral takes. Then getting "a hunch" he abruptly called a halt on the filming. Oland thought a better take should be attempted, but Lachman refused to shoot the scene again. "But," interrupted S. W. AUman, movie reptile purveyor and expert, as he reached for the shake, . "there is absolutely nothing to fear." Just then the python, without warning, ripped " into the first finger of Allman's left hand. He was given emergency treatment and later anti-tetanus injections were administered. Allman said later it was Lachman's fear which made the snake react to his own fearful thinking . . but it was a strange happening, wasn't it? . IALSO dropped in at M-G-M to see Janet Gaynor as you wished me to do. Janet was on the set going through a little sequence from "Small Town Girl," when I arrived. In this picture she plays the part of a wistful hick who rebels at the humdrum life of her narrow environment and in order to get away from it all she elopes with Robert Taylor, a sophisticated city doctor. There was Janet "out in the country" sitting comfortably under a tree. She was telling Taylor all about her dreams of life in a big city. "I know the city is wonderful," she was saying. "I know how grand the ladies dress, that they wear it Donna Risher Robert Taylor and Janet Gaynor In "Small Town Girl.' thin chiffons that cling around them, and that they go to gay parties and ..." Taylor leaned over and reached for a large black insect with four legs which crawled off the tree's . bark on to Miss Gaynor's shoulder. "Sorrv to interrupt the dialogue," Taylor said laconically, "but if this bug gets in your ear, Janet, you'll appreciate the city a darned sight more." "Cut" yelled Director William Wellman while the prop men and Taylor laughed uproariously at Janet's horrified look. MEANWHILE, I learned that the last shots were being made of that long, long story . CYER since Henry Fonda made the candid, ad l mission that he was tired of single blessedness and wanted to get married, the love lives of Holly wood's eligible, independent yes and smug bachelors have not been the same. . These unmarried ones and there is a . large number of them who revel in their freedom from the marital ties young Fonda re gards as desirable, now look upon the young New Yorker as being something like the man who stalked dramatically out of the house after saying to his wife, "Everything is over between us. You will never see me again, goodbye" then had to go back for his hat. In other words, these film bachelors claim that Fonda, by leaving their ranks and closing the door upon bachelorhood to champion marriage, has placed them in the spot where they must return and fight for their lonely, but desirable, solitude all over again. BACHELOR MICHAEL WHALEN, being Irish and independent, is the first to challenge Fonda's desire for marriage. Mike is comfortably established now in a brand new hilltop home in Hollywood and he is enjoying his freedom to the fullest. Therefore, he felt he could not let Fonda's an nouncement go by without saying a few words. "If that guy Fonda will, meet me in open debate, 'Resolved, That Bachelorhood Is a More Desirable State Than Marriage', I'll lick him before he opens his mouth," Mike retorted. "I can point myself out as a living example of "Anthony AdveVse" and I galloped over to Warner Brothers to see the finishing touches. Director Mervyn Le Roy was putting his troupe through a Venetian crowd scene. He tried many, many times to get it, but a crowd scene is unwieldy because everything and every body has to be watched and everything has to be perfect. Finally, things were just as he wanted and Di rector Le Roy approved. His eyes roamed all over, taking in the minutest details.. Then all at once the corners of his mouth turned down sharply. "Hey!" he called irritably to an "extra." "What are you doing, reading a Los Angeles paper in Venice two and a half centuries ago?" "Why, yes," the startled man admitted. "I didn't think the name of the newspaper would photo graph in a long shot like this." "Well, stop thinking," Le Roy countered. "This is not a comedy and the Chamber of Commerce is not putting its message over in Venice." And with that I galloped back to my typewriter. Cordially yours, GAIL. the bliss of solitude . . . wasn't that what some poet said, 'the bliss of solitude ?" Mike looked around his womanless domain with a sigh of content. "When a guy wants to give up freedom for bond age;" he went on, "he doesn't need a wife, he needs a doctor. There is something wrong with his head." WHALEN said it was his opinion that such good bachelors as Fred MacMurray, Eric Lin den, William Powell and Robert Taylor would back him up. MacMurray, who was making love to Joan Ben nett over on a Paramount stage according to the script certainly did back up Mike, one hundred percent. Mac, it might be stated here, is the target for many romantically-minded girls in Hollywood, but to date he continues to pursue his policy of being "just a good friend," to blonds and brunets alike. "I know when I'm well off," he said, with a broad grin. "Marriage must be pretty bad from what I hear. I can't imagine a guy wanting to get tied for life, can you?" WILLIAM (DEBONAIR) POWELL, who calls himself the "backyard Demosthenes," lives magnificently alone in a modern Grecian palace, and is an exponent of the unmarried state also. He distinctly prefers blonds and is seen most frequently with the blondest of them all, Jean Har low. Still, he clings like a pair of pants to its last suspender button, when it comes to his bachelor hood. "Oh, there are so many, many things," he re marked, casually, "that can be said in favor of the unattached." Nelson Eddy (who recently experienced a cross country marathon with a too-admiring "Ariel"), Eric Linden, Cary Grant and Robert Taylor all staunchly defend their bachelor brotherhood. ' "We're sorry for Fonda," they exclaimed. "Imagine a guy wanting to get married!" mk m, m n. The sun won't burn Betty Furness, not by a ZO gallon sombrero which she Is wearing. It Is made of red, green and blue straw. SlrQuy Standing Charles Mlddleton A DISTANCE of 100 miles separates the patio from the living room of a Southern California home in the picture "Palm Springs." The patio is in the desert and the living room is laid inside a sound stage in the Wal ter Wanger studio in Hollywood. It took Sir Guy Standing four hours to cover the distance by automobile, a distance that will take only a moment on the screen. SHADES of Lon Chaney! Charles Middleton, character actor, had to increase his height for his characterization of "Ming, the Merciless." So he called in Louis Hippy, make up artist. Hippy made a false skull and fastened it wwy,.?-" to Middleton's head with cement ft A i and liquid collodion. The Jigger 7 I was so intricate that it required ( four hours to apply and two hours I to remove. "VkiI? f The other day Mlddleton n, ! few? , : elected to Orion the windows in his well-heated dressing room.' Fumes emanating from the pan of collodion overcame the actor and the make-up man. They were discovered by Director Frederick Stephani, who came to see why Middleton's appearance on the set was delayed. The director took them to the studio's emergency hospital, where they were revived. WHITE sunshine aslant red poinsettlas ... a, lone Mexican girl drinking in a picture of Del Rio . , . an orange mansion set back in a grove of redwoods ... an oil station attendant talking about Iowa, as he helps an old lady across the street that's a bird's-eye view of Hollywood Boulevard. : .; . 1 A HOLLYWOOD PRESS AGENT IN THE THROES: "Reminiscent of a moonlit night in a Southern magnolia garden is William Lambert's romantic formal ensemble of Ivory souffle. It is designed with floating ruffles, crossed fichu-fashion over the bodice, ascending over the shoul der and narrowing under the em pire waist to meet at the base of the backless gown. The bodice ruffles to the knee and the ex ceedingly full hem flounce de scends to a graceful, divided fish tail train in back which Is outlined enchantingly by bands of tiny oblong mirrors. An ivory crepe mantle, completely bor dered in mirrors and fastened at the throat with a large bow-knot of the glittering glass, trails to the ground to envelop the long train . . ." If she says another word we'll bust out crying. CHESTER MORRIS held a reunion 'with old friends, when ho wandered onto a stage the other day to find John Hyams and Leila Mclntire, former famous vaudeville headlincrs. Morris first knew the pair when billed as "The Mysterious Morris," he opened the show In which they starred. BECAUSE he loves to hear the Shakespearean linos, Nelson Eddy has been a daily visitor on the "Romeo and Juliet" scL PACK PIVK William Lambert
