Variations

P: Asked why he and his wife planned to make a cinema of any classic as frankly boisterous as The Taming of the Shrew, Douglas Fairbanks said last week: "So much has been written about the romance and marriage of Mary Pickford and myself, and so much of it has been oversweet, that to have filmed a romantic lovestory would have been, to say the least, bad taste."

P: Bill Hart, famed for his narrow eyes, long upper lip, big hat, quit making western pictures three years ago. Some people said he was writing his autobiography, others that quarrels with his wife had broken his heart. He lived on a ranch somewhere and was only seen in Los Angeles one afternoon when he went to the funeral of a cowboy friend of his. Last week he signed with Hal Roach to make an all-talking horse-and-pistol picture.

P: In London, last week, the Film Actors Guild denounced U. S. talkies, attributed to them the collapse of the English cinemindustry, the unemployment of hundreds of cinemactors, cinemactresses, an eight million dollar shrinkage in stock valuation.

In Budapest, to prevent a like antiquating of production and projection equipment, cinemagnates outlawed sound-films until 1930.