Cal York's Gossip of Hollywood: September 1938

HOLLYWOOD SPEAKS ITS MIND

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Barbara Stanwyck: “Stories just aren’t written for women in Hollywood. Great men’s stories—Suez, Test Pilot, Zola—are constantly being produced. But, outside of Madame Curie, show me a great woman’s story.”

Cary Grant: “I don’t care how ugly they make me in pictures if they just let me play a part with some character and substance.”

Fay Bainter: “I’m excited about Hollywood and all the people in it. But I’ll be more excited when my son gets away from school to visit me.”

MEMORIES

Jean Harlow is another star destined to live on in the hearts of thousands. At the first anniversary of her death in June hundreds of fans gathered before her former home (now occupied by the William Garagans) to stand and gaze silently at the house. Many others passed through the mausoleum where she rests.

BEHIND THE RAINER-ODETS DIVORCE

Hollywood was torn pro and con when the Rainer-Odets divorce made front-page news. Cal gives you a thumbnail sketch of both principals and you can draw your own conclusions.

Louise: A girl, talented, nervous, unhappy over her career. A stay-at-home who likes to eat only when and if she’s hungry. She seldom is. Shy, entertaining notions of genius at bay. A minor Garbo, hiding her face from her fellow workers in public—“No, no, don’t speak to me off the set, please. Know me only as an artist.”

Odets: A Leftist politically, working at it feverishly. A man impatient with failure. A man shy of illness who doesn’t visit sickbeds. A force—a voice crying out—a cause in spectacles.

How could marriage win?

JOAN BENNETT FACTS

There are four puppies in Joan’s new dog kennels which she started because of her love for blond cocker spaniels.

By a series of elimination she has finally hit on ‘Bemeldi’ a contraction of Bennett and the names of her two children, Melinda and Diddy, as a name for her kennels. Merle Oberon was her very first customer, buying the cutest of the puppies.

Joan has thought out a fashion hint that should interest all blondes.

“I’ve made the mistake for years,” Joan says, “of dressing, more or less, in frilly clothes. Now I realize all blondes should dress in tailored clothes. The lightness of hair and skin becomes too pronounced in frills. It’s tailor-mades for me from now on.”

A WORRIED RHETT AND SCARLETT

With the announcement of Clark Gable as Rhett Butler and Norma Shearer as Scarlett in Gone with the Wind, Clark and Norma, far from happy, are wearing two worried frowns on their personable faces.

Clark is anxious to know these things:

“Will I bet the Rhett Butler of the fans’ dreams? If I please the North, will the South be happy over the choices? Will I interpret each scene, each move, as the millions of readers have pictured it in their minds and hearts?

“Will I fail in this, my heaviest assignment to date? Frankly, I don’t see how any actor can win with this role and I’m uneasy.”

Shearer asks this of her closest friends:

“Will I be hated by fans if I put all the shallowness of Scarlett into the role? Can they forgive me if I don’t? Will this role have a lasting influence on my career? Will the public realize it’s only play-acting, or has Scarlett become a living, breathing human to them—one I’m now about to become?”

So, on the eve of one of their greatest cinematic ventures, we find these two fine artists worried, anxious, concerned. Who says Hollywood takes its movies lightly?