Arizona Republic from Phoenix, Arizona • Page 39

The figure is familiar, but can you call her name? Her studio released thousands of pictures like this, but the young lady still didn't get customers into the theaters. Her name: auouiis WOO Discovers cMtLjt GLITTERS cs not Gold By Lucie Neville HOLLYWOOD a great dawning over HERE is Talkietown. The movie bigwigs are beginning to find out about something most people have known a long time: that a lot of movie stars aren't box-office stars. This ignorance was just the natural result of Hollywood's casual and big-hearted habit of giving practically everybody a stellar rating, like a Kentucky colonelship. Maybe an actor hasn't even made a profitable picture for his studio.

As soon as he rates a stand-in and a chair with his name painted on it, accumulates enough admirers to have a fan club, and doesn't have to pose with lions and cornerstones, he's a Hollywood. But being popular with the home folks isn't enough for movie exhibitors. They want stars that everybody knows and likes, and they are complaining bitterly and loudly that Hollywood is letting them down. A sample is the kick of a small town mid-western exhibitor, from the Hollywood Motion Picture Review, about "Duke of West "Everyone will like the picture, but it's tough to figure out how to get them in to see it because the cast is so little known." It's not like the old days when people said, "There's a Charlie Chaplin picture on at the Palace; let's go," or tots insisted, "But, mama, I goJ to have a nickel; it's Mary Pickford this afternoon." Just a famous name on the marquee won't bring in the customers today. Audiences expect to see a good story and a good supporting cast, as well as their favorite star.

And grow- ing more drama conscious, fans have lost the childish attitude of blindly worshiping some languid clotheshorse or a handsome hero with six facial expressions. INHERE are no recently discovered personali- ties who flashed to success and lasted as long as Rudolph Valentino, Trieda Bara, Wallace Reid, Douglas Fairbanks, and a dozen others. Fans are beginning to talk about John Garfield, and his roles in "Juarez" and "Family Reunion" may be all that is needed to set off the fireworks on the marquees. Richard Greene is getting tons of fan mail, but another handsome leading man may get some of it before Greene is more than launched, as he took away some of Tyrone Power's. Ann Sheridan may emerge from minor roles to a Jean Harlow-esque popularity.

Nancy Kelly, more colt than filly, will not compete against the luscious Miss Sheridan but she may be marquee material as a dramatic actress. But nobody knows who tomorrow's stars will be. 'Even Hollywood's legion of fortune tellers and tea-cup readers won't stick out their necks by predicting. Producers can't do more than play hunches and hope. And exhibitors C-vV? Sura boxoffice, dependable stars like Gary Cooper and Bing Crosby are used to advance leading lady starlets to top billing.

Shewn with Gary and Bing are Merle Oberon and Shirley Ross. (Copyright. 1939. by Every Week Magazine) aren't any help; they don't want to take chances" on pictures with unknown players in them. So almost all the major studios are depending on their established aren't getting any younger and pull them out of the red.

There are stars, of course, who have big followings because of their specialties. Gene Autry is an absolute guarantee of a full house in communities where westerns are demanded, but Hollywood doesn't know him and few even recognize him. Music lovers always go to Deanna Durbin's pictures, skating fans to Sonja Henie's. Dancing youngsters never miss a Ginger Rogers-Fred Astaire musical, but they want the team, not either player alone. There are other toppers, and even minor players, who draw heavily in certain parts of the country, and are plain "pizen" in others.

The Ritz Brothers, Bette Davis and such operetta stars as Jeanette and Eddy have sectional popularity. But studios and exhibitors say that the only stars who invariably pull in crowds everywhere by their names alone are: Shirley Temple, Clark Gable, Bing Crosby and Gary Cooper. In the final analysis, they say, a player is a star when his studio can make money on a mediocre picture in which he has the lead. And if, in addition to liking the star, audiences also applaud the picture, it's a box-office smash. PERFECT example of this is United Artists' "Cowboy and the Lady," playing steadily and profitably simply because of Gary Cooper.

His leading woman. Merle Oberon, is not well known to American audiences. The plot was the same old story of rich girl-poor boy, even after 14 of Hollywood's highest salaried writers had tinkered with the script. In it Cooper played a role parallel to his one, in "The Winning of Barbara Worth," when he was third lead under Ronald Colman and Vilma Banky. Previously, he had been a $5-a-day cowboy.

After it, there was an immediate fan demand for him, and it has-been going on ever since. Similarly, Rudolph Valentino was an instantaneous hit after "The Four Horsemen of the a bit Robert Taylor after a "Crime Doesn't Pay" short. Clark Gable, another star liked at first sight, has had only one real flop, "Parnell," which soon was forgiven by his fans. He carried its The starring career of exotic Hedy Lamarr is being launched with care and expense to avert any repetition of Simone Simon's falling star experiment. burden, as he did that of his previous picture, the Marion Davies extravaganza, "Cain and Mabel." Of Gable himself, there was no criticism.

Bing Crosby, too, is a steady enough star to be trial horse for innumerable leading women and ingenues whom his studio wants to advance. Apparently, he is one of the few radio personalities who haven't worn out their welcome by being seen and heard too much. Top money-making star for the fourth consecutive year, Shirley Temple's is the biggest name in movie lights. Exhibitors swear by her and pray for a successor. Supporting players in Miss Temple's pictures are not as lucky as Crosby ingenues, having no chance to steal scenes or show their talents too much.

"TWIDENTLY studios are beginning to listen to the theater men's pleas that a player at least be introduced to the fans before he is called a star. Metro is showing some signs of caution in its handling of Hedy Lamarr, even though it is costing a deal of dough. There were immediate plans for starring her after the attention she got in her one American appearance, "Algiers," and she was scheduled for leads with the studio's three biggest heart throbs: Spencer Tracy, Clark Gable and Robert Taylor. The Tracy film. "I Take This Woman." was shelved temporarily because of story trouble when it was nearly finished, but now they're trying to salvage it and save the $900,000 spent.

The studio dared not risk disappointing the public in the potential glamor star. "Hollywood ought to know the danger and cost of trying to insist that unknowns are before audiences can judge for themselves." observed a veteran director. "It had a fine example in Simone Simon, who was, by gosh, going to be a star if it broke the studio and Darryl Zanuck, too. She was a household byword before she ever appeared in a picture, thanks to a $50.000 campaign compounded of jokes about; her double name. 24-sheet posters telling how to pronounce it, stories about her temperament and pictures of her pretty legs.

Fans disliked her before they even saw her, much as they now resent 'Gone With the mass of advance publicity." Mile. Simon was a costly experiment but Under different handling and cautious advancement she might have been popular..