GOOD NEWS! February 1945
It's 1945! A New Year—a new slate for Hollywood. And for this shining, clean new record, I hope lor the following things:
- That pictures will be shorter. Three hours or longer is too much.
- That Van Johnson will stay as unspoiled, charming and likeable as he is (and I'm not worrying that he won't).
- That there will be fewer divorces, and that the good score for reconciliations in 1944 will keep up—Barbara Hutton and Cary Grant, Evelyn Keyes and Charles Vidor, Susan Hayward and Jess Barker, Rudy Vallee and his bride—are all a credit to that fine old habit of "thinking it over."
- That Olivia de Havilland comes back to the screen.
- That Turhan Bey forgets that pipe—and posturing. He's a nice guy—why behave like a ham?
- That Betty Grable and Rita Hayworth buy some hats.
- That another musical comes along like Cover Girl and a drama like Wilson.
- That Going My Way will never be shelved—but will be reissued for several weeks each year.
- That Bing continues to go his grand way. That Bette Davis won't travel half across the country to see a heart interest (it was Corporal Riley) and then blow up when the press finds out about it.
- That Frank Sinatra is more careful in his interviews and doesn't pop off about Hollywood. I'm for Frankie—and I think Frankie is for Hollywood.
- That Susan Hayward gets a break—privately and professionally.
- That June Allyson continues to show 'em. That Mr. Sam Goldwyn and I can get through a year without a feud (but I doubt it).
- That The Robe will be the great picture it should be.
- That all our boys in the service can lay down their arms—because beautiful Peace has come to the world again, forever and forever.
The girls who have been making the ‘corset pictures’ swear "Never again!" Judy Garland says she still has marks from her tight lacings in Meet Me in St. Louis. Greer Garson agrees that Mrs. Parkington's stays were a pain—and not in the neck! Ingrid Bergman feels that an actress who can emote in a corset is part contortionist. But it takes Betty Grable to give out with the loudest wail over her tight squeeze in Diamond Horseshoe. "The corset is not here to stay" quips Betty.
George Brent does so much raving about Joan Fontaine in The Affairs of Susan (he's her leading man) that people are saying they're in love. No such thing. But George thinks Joan has had a bad deal being labeled temperamental, and he is putting on a one-man campaign to stop it. Remember, too, that this praise is coming from Mr. Brent who can be plenty caustic about his leading ladies…
Surely Olivia de Havilland's luck will get better. It couldn't get worse. Off the screen a year because of her battles with Warners' is bad enough. Then Livvy tried to do her bit by going on a USO tour to the Pacific. But fate had still more bad luck up her sleeve. She caught pneumonia and was confined to an Army hospital. Livvy wrote her sister, Joan Fontaine, “Looks like I will be here in the Fiji Islands six months longer. The doctors think the long flight home would be bad for me until all the lung congestion is gone. How's the world going since I left it?”
So far, the star-studded cast [of Weekend at the Waldorf] headed by Ginger Rogers, Lana Turner, Walter Pidgeon, et al, is getting along fine. Ginger and Lana have no scenes together throughout the entire picture. Not that the girls wouldn't get along—but this certainly does away with the possibility. However, other gals in the cast have taken long, long looks at Ginger's brand new, swanky, portable dressing room. It is really a three-room suite on wheels, ‘done’ in corals and bright greens. By far the fanciest portable I ever sported by any star. So far it hasn't bothered Lana—or maybe she hasn't seen it.
Speaking of all these cocktail brawls and fights, William Powell has a new way of extending invitations. He just says, "Please come for cocktails—and boxing—between five and eight."
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