CAL YORK'S GOSSIP OF HOLLYWOOD: JULY 1938

THE GRASS GROWS GREENER

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For fourteen pictures, from A Bill of Divorcement in 1932 to the recent Bringing Up Baby, Katharine Hepburn has remained true to RKO, which, for Hollywood, is something of a record. Then, this past spring, she was lured over to the Columbia lot to do Holiday. Whereupon, Katie proceeded to let down her hair and have a wonderful time. It leaked out that she threw a grand party for the cast, romped all over the set, and that nary a sign of the usual Hepburn stand-offishness was visible.

All of which may, or may not, account for the fact that La Hepburn and RKO have come to a parting of ways.

As always, the break was blamed on lack of suitable story material, but it looks as though Katie has had a taste of the grass growing greener on the other side of the fence, and now, as a freelance, is giving up a paltry $200,00 (income from two pictures she was to make for RKO) to prove it.

Advance reports on Holiday are so glowing that it would appear that the redheaded star is doing the right thing in giving herself a change of scenery.

PLAY COZY—AND GET FOOLED

One of Hollywood’s mysteries is liable to be cleared up before the month is out. We refer to that old chestnut ‘Are Charlie Chaplin and Paulette Goddard really married?’

Because Paulette starts her picture with Janet Gaynor within a few weeks, and Selznick Studios, we understand, will demand a clear-cut, final answer to that question from Miss Goddard before she begins her work. They are starting a publicity campaign on Miss Goddard which may land her in the ‘Scarlett O’Hara’ role of Gone with the Wind. And the stuiod wants to know about Miss Goddard’s marriages, if any, before they start their build-up.

ARE YOU UP ON CAROLE LOMBARD?

Did you know she—

• Giggles that way off the screen, too?
• Calls Clark Gable ‘Pappy’ and scolds him or not reporting on his whereabouts so ‘accident rumours’ won’t frighten her silly?
• Can milk a cow?
• Is building a small six-room house in the valley?
• Is taking a correspondence course in agriculture from a local university and averages Bs in her homework?
• Can rope a steer?
• Is generous to relatives and a small army of people?
• Loves to talk of her Mack Sennett ‘fanny falls’ days?
• Goes to town on chocolate caramels?
• Buys fewer clothes for her own wardrobe than any star in Hollywood?
• Is the most outspoken beauty in ten states? 

THE TRUTH ABOUT THE “ECSTASY GIRL”

Perhaps nowhere else in the world do people regret so heartily their youthful mistakes. Under the merciless spotlight, their every thought and deed, their every action, past and present, is brought to light, sometimes with heartbreaking results.

We are thinking now of Hedy Lamarr. No more beautiful woman has ever stormed the doors of moviedom than Hedy, grey-eyed, raven-haired Viennese known as the “Ecstasy Girl.”

We talked to Hedy on the Algiers set the other day, an experience we shan’t soon forget.

“I can’t get away from it, this ‘Ecstasy Girl’ name,” she said. “I think to myself now I come to Hollywood and begin again. My father’s heart is broken and my mother crushed over the whole episode…I was only sixteen, young and so ambitious to get ahead. That I must appear unclothed in the picture was not in the synopsis they sent me to read. When I was told, it was too late. I was only one against a whole organization. Besides, in my country they looked at it differently. They spoke of it as art.”

From the Photoplay archives.