Born on This Day
- Gracie Allen turns 43 (but claimed she was only in her 30s). She and her husband George Burns were on a Hawaiian vacation this week, probably celebrating her birthday. [Ahead for 1939, Gracie had two films – ‘Honolulu’ and ‘The Gracie Allen Murder Case’].
News Around Hollywood
- A 51-acre site in the San Fernando Valley will be the site of the new Walt Disney Studio. It will be located at Alameda St and Riverside Dr, within the Burbank city limits near Buena Vista St. Building will commence in September at a cost between one million dollars and one and a quarter million. Disney paid $100,000 for the tract. The shorts department will remain at the Hyperion Avenue studio, with the feature department moving over to the new studio as buildings are completed. Disney believes that the new facility will help cut feature production time down from 18 months to one year.
- RKO announces that they expect to release between 40 and 48 features for the 1938-1939 schedule, plus six George O’Brien westerns. Sol Lesser will contribute four films to the grand total, and the RKO execs will be in talks with Walt and Roy Disney for their product.
- A new mystery with a newspaper background will roll at Universal. Called ‘The Comet,’ it will star William Gargan, Joy Hodges, Andy Devine, and Ruth Donnelly. Otis Garrett will direct. [The film came out in September 1938 as ‘Personal Secretary.’ The director Garrett began as an editor in the film business].
- Two of the Dead End kids will be tapped for leading roles in two upcoming productions at WB. Bobby Jordan will be in ‘Unfit to Print’ with Pat O’Brien; and Billy Halop will join the cast of ‘Crime is a Racket,’ based on a play by Warden Lewis E Lawes, entitled ‘Chalked Out.’ Neither will begin until the two are finished with their roles in ‘Angels with Dirty Faces.’ [The Bobby Jordan film with O’Brien came out as ‘Off the Record’ in 1939. And the Halop film also came out in 1939 as ‘You Can’t Get Away with Murder’ with Bogart in one of the lead roles. Lawes was a prison warden and writer, who wrote from experience. He was made the warden of Sing Sing prison in New York in 1920, and served until he retired in 1941. He wrote other books that were turned into films – 20,000 Years in Sing Sing (1932); Over the Wall (1938); Invisible Stripes (1939)].
- Bruce Cabot lands at Columbia next week to star with Ria Hayworth in ‘Homicide Bureau.’ [The film was released in January 1939. Hayworth played a forensics expert. Pretty good for a twenty year old].
- The next big budget film at Universal will be ‘The Storm.’ Vincent Price (from the stage) will be in the lead under the direction of Harold Young. Charles Bickford, Barton MacLane, and Andy Devine will be joining him. [Someone got their wires crossed. All the people cited were involved with ‘The Storm,’ but that film was not Vincent Price’s debut. Instead he appeared in ’Service de Luxe’ as one of the leads under the direction of Rowland V Lee. It was shooting at Universal at the same time as ‘The Storm’].
- The grand daughter of Jesse James, Jo Frances James, is helping 20th Century Fox assemble data upon which to base their film about her famous ancestor. [Interestingly, her father Jesse E James served as technical adviser on the 1927 ‘Jesse James’ from Paramount. Jo and her sister Estelle came out to Hollywood with him too. And the family moved to Los Angeles. There was talk at the time that Estelle would appear in the film as their great grandmother. It starred Fred Thomson, a huge Western star at the time and rival to Tom Mix. He was married to famous screenwriter Frances Marion. Tragically he would die the next year from a misdiagnosed case of tetanus].
- After nine years directing on the RKO lot, Mark Sandrich is leaving. After finishing cutting his latest Astaire/Rogers film, Carefree, he will move over to Paramount to take on Jack Benny’s next feature. [This would be the 1939 film ‘Man about Town’].
Outside Hollywood
Tombstone AZ has put itself up for sale. Once a town of 7000, it is now only a village of 500. The offer was made to Harry Sherman the producer of the Hopalong Cassidy movies. Sherman has relayed the offer to Paramount.