St. Louis Post-Dispatch from St. Louis, Missouri • Page 66

Remember Wken Film Stars Drove Purple Limousines? One for Believe It or Not Department Princess And Her Smoking by Henry McLemorc wry; i By Howard C. Heyn A Special Correspondent of the Pott-Dispatch HOLLYWOOD, Nov. 12. HERE seems to be no doubt about it: The Hollywood star, as an individual, has lost a lot of allure in the last The cinema, as an American institution, is just as ap f71 SS' Jpty DATTONA BEACH, Fla. Nov.

12. IT always surprises me when any reader turns to me for an opinion on any subject whatsoever. It makes me doubt the good sense of my readers, and no columnist likes to suspect that he is writing for a group of people whose buttons aren't all there. Yet readers do write to me. Only last week I got a number of letters wanting to know what I thought about Princess Margaret smoking a cigarette in public.

To tell the truth I hadn't given a thought to her smoking In public, but I guess if I am going to think about her smoking at all, I had better think about her smoking in public. So far, the Princess has given no indication that she ever intends asking me to a private smoker in Buckingham Palace, or a roll-your-own party at Windsor Castle. That's for the likes of Sharman Douglas, Danny Kaye, and the Marquis of Whoever-It-Is-at-t he-Moment. mm ty I rf-jjn K.i if i vivj I II a III pealing. The movie business As, if anything, richer.

The attraction of stardom is just as strong among ambitious youngsters. But the big time actors and actresses of the purple limousine era had more personal glamour. Veterans like Cecil B. DeMille, Samuel Goldwyn and John Ford say so. Theda Bara, Mary Pickford, Clara Bow, Gloria Swanson, Dolores Costello, Mae Murray, Norma and Constance Tal-madge, Janet Gaynor, Norma Shearer, Douglas Fairbanks Rudolph Valentino, John Gilbert, John Barrymore those are only a few of yesterday's truly colorful personalities.

Who can match them today for real splash? They lived in the manner the public expected of stars. Vast houses, vast parties, fabulous clothes. Gold-plated Duesenberg No slacks. No sport shirts. Today's stars go to bed earlier.

They work longer hours. They rattle around in station wagons and they pedal bicycles. Once in a while they get into a mild nightclub fracas but seldom. Their contracts contain morals clauses. li'iffim'vlliiSftSWlili ia-- 1 1 iibujiimJi -i JEANNE HOFFMAN AT HER POLICE GAZETTE EDITORIAL DESK.

SHE BEGAN WRITING ACCOUNTS OF SPORTS EVENTS FOR HER HIGH SCHOOL PAPER. By Virginia Irwin A Staff Correspondent of Post-Dispatch Young Woman Now Executive Editor of Police Gazette Served Hitches as Sports Writer in Philadelphia and New York Before Taking Over Job. WONDER if I am capable of thinking about such a monumental question as the Tightness or the wrongness of a princess of royal blood drawing nicotine and coal tar into her lungs and then blowing it out again, while commoners looked on? But in these inflationary days, when readers don't go as far as they used to, one cannot afford to let them down, so here I go a-thinking about the puff that was heard around the world. From what I read about the celebrated first public drag it was obvious that Princess Margaiet had been hitting the old weed in DeMille, Goldwyn and Ford agree the golden age of personal flamboyance has passed. Says DeMille: "Actresses like RUDOLPH VALENTINO EXERTED GREAT INFLUENCE.

Corinne Griffith, Katherine Lillian Gish, Dolores Costello, 1 man's life came the day she took over the Police Gazette. She says there is one promise she can make to subscribers; there will be a baseball story in every issue, even in the winter. More than a century old, the Police Gazette at one time w'as an enormously profitable publication and boasted a big circulation. Bandit Jesse James was one of the Gazettes subscribers; bar keeps and barbers always had it on tap for their customers; and solid citizens peeked at it on the sly. Lurid enough under the editorship of Richard Kyle Fox, the Police Gazette became even racier after it was taken over in 1932 by Mrs.

Merle Williams Hersey, a Methodist minister's daughter. In 1935 it was bought by publisher Roswell, who ran into trouble with the United States mails in 1942 when the Police Gazette was barred for "obscenity." Under its woman editor, the Police Gazette will scrap sex and sin and go in heavily for sports in an effort to re-establish its old-time reputation of the 80s when John L. Sullivan and Gentleman Jim Corbett were big figures in the sports world. Five feet 10 inches tall and a well-proportioned 140 pounds. Miss Hoffman loves feminine clothes, likes interior decorating, and is married to a former chief officer in the British Merchant Marine.

"I've made a baseball fan out of an Englishman who made me hopping mad the first time I ever met him by observing that he thought baseball a stupid game," Jeane says of her husband. Jeane wonders these days how her husband's relatives in England are taking the news that she has been made editor of the Police Gazette. "It must seem to them a strange job for a woman," she laughs. "But for that matter it seems a strange job for a woman to a lot of Americans. The day the New York papers carried my picture I heard a guy in a bar say, 'What's the world coming to a dame running the Police NEW YORK, Nov.

12. CHIC, blonde and feminine as fudge, Jeane Hoffman, newly appointed executive editor of the once rough and rowdy Police Gazette, has had moments in her life when she wished she looked like a woman wrestler. Possessed of a lyrical torso and a pair of shapely lejrs. Jeane looks more like a Follies dollie than she does a sports writer and authority on big-league baseball, horse-racing snd professional football. "The first time I showed up at the spring training camps, ihe managers of the big league baseball teams seriously considered slipping a little arsenic into my soup," tile Police Gazette's new boss said as she sipped a glass of soda pop.

"You could hear them moaning from Sarasota to Seventh Avenue 'My gosh. a dame covering baseball'. That was one of the times when I wished I bore more of a resemblance to a woman truck-driver or bricklayer." Hired by Gazette publisher Harold H. Roswell to recapture the magazine's once firm hold on the public, the photogenic Jeane had put in seven years on the sports page of the New York Journal-American before she moved last month into her executive berth on the Police Gazette. She had covered everything from frog-jumping contests to World Series games.

She had made firm friends with and won the respect of the bigwigs of the sports world and even had men like Billy South-worth admitting that there was nothing wrong with a woman covering big-league baseball. She had built a reputation for never "throwing her sex around," and sports figures overlooked the fact that she resembled an Earl 1 pain to the sports writers. But I was in heaven." On the West Coast Jeane also covered wrestling. "It was standard procedure at every wrestling match for one of the wrestlers to toss his opponent into my lap in the press box," Jeane says. "It was a great act and I got a lot of sympathy from the spectators you know, poor hard-working newspaper woman having to put tip with having those sweaty wrestlers being tossed in ray lap.

Put 1 loved it, although I did wish occasionally I'd pet a fresh one that didn't smell so bad." Reasoning that it was time phe moved on to the big league, Jeane started sending sports cartoons and features to the Philadelphia Evening Bulletin. When some of her stuff saw the light of Eastern print, she began pestering the Bulletin for a job. The sports editor of that paper made the mistake of writing her a letter which he intended as a brushoff, but which she promptly turned into an excuse to show up in Philadelphia. "We might be able to use more of your stuff, if you were a little nearer, but being: in California the sports editor wrote. "That was all I needed," Jeane says.

"As quick as I could I filled up the gas tank, tossed some slacks in a suitcase, got my mother settled in the front scat and headed for Philadelphia. When I walked in and told the sports editor who I was, he was anything but polite. He said. 'You mean you're that dame in California? Oh. my The upshot was that Jeane Mas Carroll cutie and admired instead her knowledge of sports and her ability as a writer.

It was this knowledge and ability that decided publisher Roswell when he was casting about for a new editor for the Police Gazette and landed Miss Hoffman in a seat that had been marked "for men only" in all t-he Gazette's 104 years of existence. Once banned from the mails on a charge of "obscenity," and long standard equipment in all barbershops and barrooms, The Police Gazette has in the last few years lost considerable of its sin-and-sex flavor. It has also lost circulation. Under new editor Hoffman, it will get a revamping. It will be aimed chiefly at sports fans but will contain some articles of general interest, and take on a more modern appearance.

BORN in Los Angeles, the energetic new editor of the Police Gazette began her sports writing for her high school paper. At the age of 15, she sold a sports cartoon for $2 to the Hollywood Citizen News, promptly started bombarding Claude Newman, sports editor of the News with more cartoons, and wound up talking him into letting her cover baseball games for the paper. "I was just 16 at the time and I had to take my mother with whenever I went to cover a game." Jeane. who has now reached the ripe old age of 29. laughs.

"Mother hated baseball, so while I was in my glory in the press box, she'd sit in the ladies' wash room and knit until time to take me home. I guess I must have been an awful taken to the managing editor, who, impressed by the young woman's determination, promptly hired her. Since she had described herself not only as a sports writer, but also an artist, he promptly sent her out to cover a Philadelphia society fashion show. "When I turned in my drawing, the managing editor almost fainted," Jeane recalls. "Instead of a nice, pretty fashion drawing, all the women had hairy legs and big bulging muscles.

I honestly didn't do it on purpose. It was just that I had never drawn anything but big athletic men." INSTEAD of packing her back to California, the managing editor took the stand that here was a gal who knew sports and nothing else. For three years Jeane covered sports for the Bulletin and without too much trouble talked her boss into letting her have a whack at covering spring training in the baseball camps. "Billy Southworth was my greatest help after he discovered that I meant business and wasn't just down there on a stunt fling," Jeane says. "And it was on the strength of my stories from the spring training that I landed in New York on the Journal-American." The only woman writer covering men's sports, Jeane, in addition to her work on the Journal-American, wrote sports articles for several magazines, including the Police Gazette.

Except for covering her first baseball game at the age of 16, the biggest excitement in Miss Hoff- PRINCESS MARGARET PUFF HEARD ROUND THE WORLD. private, because there was no mention of her coughing, half-choking, and letting out those little putt-putt-putts of smoke which are the giveaways of the novice smoker. MacDonald, Mildred Harris and Gloria Swanson were a tremendous influence. Public devotion to them was terrific. I won't say that today's stars are without influence, but their popularity does not approach that of the old timers.

Good ecreen stars now are little fluffs of femininity put together by makeup men." EVERYBODY IX HOLLYWOOD has a dog. but a few years ago one of the sights of the town was Pola Negri promenading on the boulevard with her leopard cub, on leash. Once she threw the animal at a cameraman. Everybody had a big house, and many still do, but when It came to beach retreats Marion Davies outdid them all with what is now Ocean House, 110 rooms, at Santa Monica. Bessie Love really owned a lavender limousine, driven by a liveried chauffeur.

Tom Mix had a big white touring car, encrusted with outside initials in gold. Fatty Arbuckle's car had a collapsible bar. Buster Keaton and Lew Cody owned a land yacht: actually a big bus, with built-in kitchen and ieeping quarters. Everything they did was reflected in the public taste. Says Goldwyn: "I am sure that no star ever exerted such a tremendous influence, on both men and women as did Rudolph Valentino a quarter of a century ago.

Bell-bottom trousers, the cut of men's suits, and even men's hair style parted and sleeked down were adapted from Valentino's screen identity. INCOME TAXES, probably more than anything else, have put a crimp in the lush living which once characterized Hollywood. With more money than they ever dreamed possessing, stars a quarter century ago were rated by their yachts, autos and jewels. One of the press agents of that day was Joe Reddy. now publicity director for Walt Disney productions.

"Today's stars," says Joe, "have no lasting popularity. The new sensations seem to fade quickly. The veterans, like Gable and Grant, have outlived themselves. "In the old days, an individual star could carry a picture. Now some films have eight or 10 name actors, and all have two or three.

"Show me a comic today with a following like Chaplin or Lloyd enjoyed in his heyday. Eeing a star once was like being a member of an exclusive club. Today the club is no longer exclusive." Outstanding French Import Avoids Ooh-la-la Tradition IT IS MY OPINION that, although a gasp of surprise ran through the room when she lignti up, her first public smoke didn't give her half the thrill the fiist one she had in private did. Thnt was the one, I'll bet you, that she had from a cigarette slipped from her Dad's case, ana which saw her lock herself in her room, and open wide the windows so no telltale odor would linger there. And I'll bet she sucked a mint, or brushed her tpeth twice as vigorously as usual before kissing her mother goodnight, so tlyit the smell of that first bootlegged smoke wouldn't be on her breath.

If that isn't about the way it worked out. then Princess Margaret isn't like most other girls, which she surely seems to be. I f1 i rYI WHAT PUZZLES ME is how Princess Margaret, when she started smoking on the sly pretty regularly, managed to get her cigarettes. She couldn't very well summon a lady-in-waiting and send her flying down to a tobacconist's, nor could she afford to bum them off thp palace guardf. They might have been tattle-tales.

What a fortune awaits the princess if she cares to follow in the footsteps of less distinguished women cigarette smokers and go in for indorsements. After x- Walking Citizen WITH JOHN GARFIELD By Harold HeHcrnan A SERIOUS SIDE ELOQUENT EYES Newcomer Is Small, Slender, Has Green-Gray Eyes, Light Brown Hair M1CHELINE HAS SWEET FACE Micheline Prelle Depends on Her Acting Ability, Not Her Beauty By Christopher Billopp 5 -s Another in the series of articles on New Faces in Hollywood. 7 4 1 si "rv 'i JAV 'J', A WALKER ii a person who declines lift on the ground that he likes to walk and consider walking good for him. However, he need not expect to be believed by persons who effer him the lift. They cannot conceive of anybody in his right mind liking to walk.

They cannot imagine anybody putting himself to discomfort in the doubtful expectation cf doing himself good. No. There must be some far more subtle reason why the person has declined the lift. Perhaps he is on some secret mission and does not want them to know what he is up to. IT MAT BE that he is proud and feels that if he cannot have his own car he will not put himself under the obligation of riding in the car of another.

On the other hand, perhaps he looks down on them. Possibly he is ashamed of being seen associating with them. Ride in their ear and he might have to introduce them to his friends. Or he may have a prejudice against the make and appearance of the car. He may be fearful the seats will be uncomfortable, rain will beat in the windows and the engine will break down.

OB PERHAPS the whole trouble is that he does not trust them when they say they are going directly to the place for which he is headed and solemnly promise not to pick up laundry, leave a suit at the cleaners, or get the tank filled with gas. The more he Insists that the desire to walk is his only object the more they will be convinced he is concealing the true reason. Consequently, as much as the walker wants to walk, to avoid being suspected he will disregard his own wishes and get Into the ear and ride. ried off Cinemond's sward for the best actress and won the International Critics Award et the Brussels Festival as the best living screen actress. Micheline hopes to make the Bernhardt picture soon.

"Bernhardt's life is in public domain," she says, "but the people in her life are not: her mother, husband, son. Bill and I have an arrangement with her granddaughter, Lysiane Bernhardt, for the rights to 'Sarah Bernhardt Ma We plan to make it in French and English." Although small and fragile in appearance, Micheline is a lover of outdoor life. She is a good swimmer, a fair tennis player and a crack shot. She and her husband recently returned from a big game hunt in the high Sierras. They brought down one bear, and it was Micheline's rifle that did it.

The Marshalls are not active In film aociety. Their friends are chiefly Bill's and few of these are in motion pictures. The Marshalls spend two hours a day studying languages, Bill on French and Micheline on her English. "I must learn English so that I know it as well as I do French," Micheline says. "It is difficult to play in a different language, for I must understand not only the words but also the fpelings behind them." the.

arts and her first schooling was directed that way. But Micheline turned out to be a problem child end the harried mother turned her over to the nuns at Notre Dame convent. School dramatics captivated her and she knew she wanted to be an actress. The Chassagne family was not thrilled by Micheline's choice but humored it and entered her in the dramatic school of Raymond Ro-leau. with whom she later starred.

A director seeking a girl to play a minor role in "Jeune Filles en Detresse" tested Micheline. She won the lead. The character name was Micheline Presle end she promptly adopted it as her own. A SUCCESSION of starring roles followed, in both comedy and tragedy, and Micheline rocketed to the top among European favorites. In 1945 Hollywood and British producers made her offers but she waited until she got the kind she wanted.

Few Hollywood stars can match Micheline's list of acting awards. She recently received the highly regarded London Daily News award for her "memorable performance" in "Le Diable Au Corps." In 1947 she won the French Gallup Poll for the best actress in French films, also car Marshall, Hollywood writer-director, in Paris, where he was making a picture. Marshall was then married to, but separated from Michel Morgan, who is, oddly, Micheline's chief rival in French films. Marshall was a passenger on the boat Micheline took to the United States and was also Hollywood bound. During the passage and the months that followed in Hollywood the acquaintance developed into something more exciting and shortly after Miss Morgan had obtained a divorce, Micheline and Marshall were married in Santa Barbara, last Sept.

3. Micheline has been kept tinder cover, publicity-wise. Experience has shown that the best way for the public to discover a star is to allow just that to happen, and without prompting. Micheline is small (five feet, three) and slender (108 pounds) and has gray-green eyes and light brown, closely cropped hair. Her features ere delicate and cleanly chiseled.

There is nothing about her appearance to peg her immediately as French and yet she is outside the tradition of the American look. She was born Micheline Chas-eagne 26 years ago on the art dominated left bank of the Seine in Paris to Robert Chassagne. a stockbroker, and his actress wife. Mme. Chas8gne was determined her child would be dedicated to a picture depicting the life of Sarah Bernhardt.

"Micheline Prelle is one of the outstanding actresses of our time," says Zanuck. "She is an intuitive performer and is bound to be a great favorite in this country." Miss Prelle is taking every precaution to avoid being looked upon as an "ooh-la-la" Folies Bergere graduate. That is why she has worked so hard to speak English without an accent. "I'd like to be able to play any role regardless of the nationality of the character," the actress said. "Of course," she added, "in spite of all my preparations, the inevitable happened and in 'The Big Fall' I am portraying a Parisienne.

However, I do not roll my eyes nor wear a chorus costume. The girl I portray is one who has lots of troubles." MICHELINE arrived in Hollywood bearing the surname, Presle, pronounced Prell. Zanuck heard someone call her Pressel and a joker twisted it into Pretzel, so the producer promptly phoneticized it into Prell. Shortly thereafter a soap concern Jaunched a shampoo called Prell. Zanuck coped with this development by adding an to the end of Mlche-line's name.

In coming to Hollywood, Micheline not only started a new career for herself, but a new personal life as well. She had met William HOLLYWOOD, Nov. 12. DARRYL ZANTCK not only is grooming several young American players for stardom in 1950, he also is importing stars from Europe. Outstanding among the imports Is Micheline Prelle, one of France's reigning favorites.

Miss Prelle, who reported at Twentieth Century-Fox a year and a half "go, was kept under wraps while she perfected her command of English. Now she is co-starring with John Garfield in "The Big Fall" which will reach the screen next spring. Miss Prelle rates in Europe about as Ingrid Bergman does in Hollywood films. She has had many honors heaped on her for her work in "Le Diable au Corps" in the which is now playing in this country. Zanuck had to outbid two other Hollywood studios and one in England in order to obtain Miss Prelle's services.

Her agreement calls for two pictures a year with the privilege of making one a year in France. Also in the contract Is a paragraph which states that whenever he gets around to it she may take time out to devote herself to the project dearest to her heart. SO SHE DUCKS OUT FOR A SMOKE. hausting tobacco indorsements, she could enter the field of cream (cold, vanishing, and cleansing), silver (sterling and plate), beer (dry and wet), and hand lotions (left and right). She could put England on its financial feet in a year.

Now to think about something really important. Rocky Graziano home life, say. SUNDAY MORNING, NOVEMBER 11, 1P49.