NEWS AROUND HOLLYWOOD
- The press department at WB makes announcements about the Dead End kids. They are currently in Indio CA for ‘They Made Me a Criminal.’ John Garfield heads the cast, in which they are playing date orchard pickers (see August 18). Next a change of gears is plotted for them to appear in an Horatio Alger type story entitled ‘The Battle of City Hall,’ but they shall return to type in ‘Hell’s Kitchen,’ which will star Humphrey Bogart and Gale Storm. [The story ‘The Battle of City Hall’ was made into the 1939 film ‘Angels Wash Their Faces.’ The name was changed to tie it to ‘Angels with Dirty Faces.’ However, it was made after ‘Hell’s Kitchen,’ which headlined Ronald Reagan and Margaret Lindsay instead of Bogart and Storm].
- A committee has been appointed from the producers association to look into labor problems involving the Directors’ Guild and the Screen Writers’ Guild. The committee consists of three individuals: Darryl F Zanuck, E J Mannix, and Sam J Briskin. [Zanuck from 20th Century Fox, Mannix from MGM, and Briskin from Columbia, would meet with directors W S Van Dyke, Howard Hawks, and Frank Capra to represent the studio interests in upcoming hearings].
- With Randolph Scott freed from Paramount to take a role in ‘Jesse James’ at 20th Century Fox [see August 16], Robert Preston will take over the young male role in ‘Disbarred’ originally meant for Scott. [Preston would follow this film with two major credits for 1939 – ‘Union Pacific’ and ‘Beau Geste’ for the studio].
- Director Tay Garnett is looking for a dozen real geisha girls for his next feature, ‘Trade Winds.’
PER ED SULLIVAN
- The columnist reports that there is no truth to the rumor that Shirley Temple will do the life story of Dillinger. [On the face of it, it seems that Sullivan was making a joke, the source of which I am at a loss to explain. I did come across a plethora of news headlines for August of 1938, that were touting the decline of bank robberies since the end of the Dillinger era (which was marked by his death in 1934). A Shirley Temple movie was playing at one of the two possible movie theaters he was expected to attend that fateful night].
- To the allegations from the US Congress that Hollywood is full of communists, Donald Ogden Stewart, Sylvia Sidney, Ernst Lubitsch, Fredric March, Lewis Milestone, Dorothy Parker and Gloria Stewart have challenged the Dies committee an open debate to be held at the LA Philharmonic Auditorium on the 24th. [Congressman Martin Dies, Democrat from Texas, helped create the House Committee Investigating Un-American Activities (aka the Dies Committee), having become alarmed about the subversive elements in government and in national organizations].
OUTSIDE HOLLYWOOD
Mrs Lionel Atwill reports to the Baltimore police that their home (Rainbow Hill in Green Spring Valley, Maryland) was robbed while they were absent the last six weeks. Thieves took furs, rugs, and furnishings valued at $1428. This is the second time they were targeted, they lost several thousands of dollars worth of furnishings the year prior. [Mrs Atwill was a wealthy socialite, the former Louise Cromwell Brooks. Atwill was her third husband. Her second was General Douglas MacArthur, whom she divorced in 1929].