The Year Was 1938 – August 13

REPORTED ON THIS DATE

• Story editor and reader Meta Arenson married screenwriter Irving Reis on July 31 in Agua Caliente, Mexico. They were set to honeymoon in Carmel afterwards, but he was called back to work at Paramount on the script for ’The King of Chinatown.’ So, Meta stayed in Carmel alone until he could rejoin her. [Better known by the name of her second husband, agent George Rosenberg, Meta became an agent and represented Robert Redford and James Garner, and was the producer of Garner’s The Rockford Files].
• RKO announced on this date that they plan their biggest production year in their history. Besides 54 feature films they will include 199 short subjects. [I’m not sure if they met their projections for the year, for the period in question was not a calendar year, but rather a fiscal one. Their number of feature films for 1938 was 42; and 49 for 1939. As for the shorts it is hard to tally there too. Besides the Disney cartoons they distributed, they also had newsreels, sports films, documentaries, and comedies with Leon Errol, Sheila Barrett, and Edgar Kennedy].

NEWS AROUND HOLLYWOOD

• Jeff Davis, the King of the Hoboes, called the newspapers today to report that he and his wife were checking out of the luxury hotel and moving to a five dollar a week rooming house. A studio had hired him as a consultant on a film about hoboes and were footing the bill for their stay.  Davis explained that he did not want their friends in Cincinnati to think that they’d gone Hollywood.  And he added that in the upcoming Hobo convention in Cleveland, a proposal would be put forth to issue hoboes with registration cards to distinguish them from “tramps” and “bums.” [Davis had been elected king by the “knights of the road” between 1908 and 1935, after which he was appointed King for Life. He had appeared as an extra in a few silent films. He recently appeared as an extra in Paramount’s ‘The Arkansas Traveler.’ Its production is listed as complete in early August. So, perhaps this was the studio in question that had been putting him and his wife up in the fancy hotel].
• Norma Shearer’s trip to New York was postponed indefinitely today.

• RKO sent a busload of news writers to Lone Pine to visit the Gunga Din company at work. When temperatures hit 115 inside the bus, three of the press agents passed out.
• Warner Studio club holds a picnic on Catalina. [The Warner Studio Club was an organization of studio employees – actors, crew and executives. Besides going on picnics they put together an annual blooper reel].

OUTSIDE HOLLYWOOD

• Paulette Goddard visited Reno, NV today, her first time in six years. This raised speculation that she was there for a divorce from Charlie Chaplin. But she still will not talk about or even admit whether they are married or not. She was in the area to check on some property in the Mt Rose country southwest of Reno as a possible site for a winter sports club.
• Sylvia Sidney marries Luther Adler in London.