News Around Hollywood

  • Leo Gorcey, one of the Dead End kids, was sentenced to jail for five days after his appearance before a judge today on a speeding charge. The incident took place on May 26. The arresting officer testified that he clocked Gorcey at 60 mph at Santa Monica Blvd and Gower St. After being flagged down the 20 year old tried to flee, and the officer reports he was going 50mph before he could force him to the curb. [This bad boy, on and off the screen, would rack up six films for 1939].
  • WB has started negotiations with Elisabeth Bergner for the lead in an adaptation of James Hilton’s novel – We Are Not Alone – for WB. The male lead role is still open, Paul Muni having turned it down as unsuitable for him. [The film was made and came out in 1939, but Bergner was not in it. She stayed in Britain and made ’Stolen Life,’ directed by her husband Paul Czinner. Paul Muni did, however, take the male lead opposite Jane Bryan, who took the role offered to Bergner].
  • Jimmy Butler (18 yr old) now cast for MGM’s ‘Boy’s Town.’ They should depart Thursday for two weeks work on location at Boys’ Town in Nebraska. [Four films with various studios lay ahead for the young actor in 1939. He was killed in action in France near the end of WW2].
  • Next week RKO will add another picture to their busy schedule on their lot. ‘The Mad Miss Manton’ will join ‘Gunga Din’ and ‘Room Service.’ ‘Manton’ marks the return of Barbara Stanwyck to her home lot for the first time in several months. Leigh Jason is to direct. [Stanwyck got a bump in salary for this film – $60,000 – up from the $50,000 she received for the prior year’s ’Stella Dallas,’ most likely the result of her Best Actress nomination for that film].
  • Goldwyn has fleshed out the cast for ‘The Lady and the Cowboy’ with three old timers: Iron Eyes Cody, (whom they list as an Indian Archery Champ); Silvertip Baker, veteran of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show; and Johnny Judd, roping champion of the world. Iron Eyes last appeared with Gary Cooper in the film ‘The Winning of Barbara Worth.’ [I was surprised to learn that Cody was not a Native American, but was born in Louisiana of Italian, or more specificly Sicilian ancestry. He is not listed at IMDB for the Barbara Worth title, although he may well have been uncredited. He certainly was in Hollywood two years before it was made].

Per Columnist Sidney Skolsky

  • Allen Boretz and Jack (John) Murray, the authors of the play Room Service are at work at RKO, but not on the film version of their play. They had first been brought to Hollywood to work on ‘A Day at the Races’ for the Marx Brothers. After a week’s labor on this film, they were taken off and left idle for 16 weeks. When their play took off on Broadway they were assigned another film (not Room Service) but a new one – ’Twice in a Lifetime.’ [There is no film title Twice in a Lifetime from this time period. It appears that Boretz and Murray parted company and moved on to projects with other partners for 1939].
  • Morrie Ryskind who wrote the screenplay for ‘Room Service,’ was complaining that he took an hour out of this two hour play, and now it was running three hours. [Ryskind would write the screenplay for a Jack Benny film – ‘Man about Town’ at Paramount for 1939].

By rwoz2