The Year Was 1938 – July 14

NEWS AROUND HOLLYWOOD

• 20^th Century Fox has announced that Arleen Whalen has won the lead role opposite Tyrone Power for their upcoming Technicolor production ‘Jesse James.’ Her flaming red hair is cited as one of the reasons for her selection. Cameras should roll the middle of next month. [Whalen was looking forward to playing opposite Power until she learned he would be sporting a beard, and she feared she would be invisible in the close ups. She needn’t have worried for something happened and Nancy Kelly wound up with the plum part instead, for this 1939 film. That year Whelan appeared in three films, one on loan out to Republic and the other two for her home studio. The big Fox film was John Ford’s ‘Young Mr Lincoln’].

• Jerome Odlum, the Minnesota newsman makes another book sale to WB, Joining his other two (Each Dawn I Die and Dust Be My Destiny) is Nine Lives Are Not Enough. They bought it for James Cagney or Pat O’Brien. [The book finally made it to the screen in 1941, starring Ronald Reagan and Joan Perry].
• Negotiations are now underway at RKO with Lee Marcus to retain his services for the low budget projects at the studio. His current contract comes to an end on Aug 14. [In the business since the 1920s, Marcus had been a VP at FBO the precursor of RKO. Long involved with short films, he made his first feature in 1934. For the year ahead (1939) he would have his hand in on 29 titles].
• Kay Francis’ next film ‘Curtain Call’ began production on this date at Warners, Busby Berkeley directing. [Francis was originally announced for this same project in 1937 under the title of ‘Comet Over Broadway,’ but a few bumps occurred along the way. Others were offered the role, including Bette Davis who decided she would take a suspension from the studio rather than be in it. (This month Davis had won her dispute with the studio, and was working in ’The Sisters’). Francis was again pushed into the disputed role, and the title reverted back to ‘Comet Over Broadway.’ Branded as “box office poison” along with Hepburn by exhibitors in May – Francis was falling on hard times – now she was becoming discontented with the projects that WB was offering her. Once her WB contract ended it was not renewed. She had been the highest paid actress on the lot]. 

PER ED SULLIVAN

• Fears were rising in Hollywood with more news about eye infections, (the Jack Dunn situation was front and center). Clark Gable had the latest scare – he was out on his ranch roping some calves. He took off his gloves at one point to do the chore, and the following morning his eyes were swollen shut and his head ballooned. Specialists say it was nothing serious.
• After a visit with cameraman Tony Gaudio on the set of ‘The Sisters,’ the columnist reveals some of the secrets in filmmaking that were passed on from him. Buckshot photographs better as caviar, than caviar. Cellophane looks more like ice than ice (and it doesn’t melt under the hot lights). Real grass isn’t green enough. Tea looks more like whiskey than whiskey. Fog is shot on clear days with artificial fog. The best drunks on screen are teetotalers. Big banquet scenes are filmed after lunch, so that the actors and extras aren’t all that hungry and won’t eat so much valuable food (sounds more like something calculated to make a producer happy).

OUTSIDE HOLLYWOOD

• Thirty thousand greeted Howard Hughes and his crew when they landed at Floyd Bennett Field in New York today. They set a new record for an around-the-world flight – 91 hours (three days, 19 hours and  seventeen minutes. He and his crew cut in half the previous record set by Wiley Post in 1933. Hughes paid the expenses for the flight out of his own pocket – $300,000. Hughes announces that all he wants now is a bath and a massage.
• It was reported that Katharine Hepburn has left her summer residence in Connecticut this morning. Having been linked romantically in the past to Howard Hughes, it was believed she was headed into New York, to meet Howard Hughes upon his return.