Hollywood & War

The amusement capital of the nation is chronically bored. There are too many entertainers in Hollywood who want to be entertained on their nights off, too few gilded saloons to entertain them. Hollywood gets tired of making the round of its half-dozen bars, listening to its own prolific gossip. Recently Hollywood found an exciting new interest--the war. Before the invasion of France most Hollywooders began (and ended) their reading of the press with the movie columns. Now they are beginning to bend an ear toward Roosevelt, Churchill and Reynaud with as much respect as toward Louella Parsons or Jimmie Fidler.

Behind this sudden concern for world events there are sound economic reasons. When the shooting began last fall in Europe, Hollywood uttered a piercing shriek over the decrease in its foreign revenues. Most of the belligerents forbade the export abroad of box-office receipts, but they went on piling up in the form of credits. Now Hitler is making it look as if these credits too might disappear. Result: the most frantic retrenchment in Hollywood history.

One of the first to retrench was Walt Disney. He has moved his entire staff to a new studio at Burbank, dropping some 400 people, about a quarter of his payroll, on the way. During the past fortnight Paramount carved off about 50 of its excess employes, while 20th Century-Fox was reported to have fired from 100 to 200 persons. Bullock's-Wilshire shop did not sell an expensive fur coat in ten days and Giro's night club was a morbid expanse of bare white table tops on Thursday, usually the busiest night.

Only attempt to part the war clouds was the opening of Don Dickerman's Pirate's Den around the corner from Slapsie Maxie Rosenblooms screwball restaurant. Under festoons of fish nets and anchor chains Stockholders Rudy Vallee, Fred MacMurray, Errol Flynn, Jimmie Fidler (in pirate costume), Johnny Weissmuller, Ken Murray (in pirate costume) and others fed (at $7.50 a head) decorative celebrities and the prominent press. Among the 400 eaters: Hearst's Polly Prying Louella Parsons, Columnists Ed Sullivan and Jimmie Fidler, Comic Jack Benny, Ventriloquist Edgar Bergen (his balding head swathed in a pirate's bandanna), Cinemactors Gary Cooper, Ray Milland, Cinemactress Dorothy Lamour (who had dressed up in a pirate costume that afternoon for photographers), and Fox's smart, hand-pumping Publicity Chief Harry Brand.

While pirate-costumed waiters whooped: "Avast, swabs!" and "Ahoy, landlubbers!" photographers climbed over everybody in search of shots and the band climbed down a rope from a hole in the ceiling. Everybody had a good drink but when they woke up the next noon, they found the Nazis were still in France and Hollywood was full of martial portents:

> Producer Jack Warner was said to have banned the German language on the Warner lot. The studio declared this was obviously untrue since it would be impossible for many employees to communicate with each other.

> Charlie Chaplin was reported to have halted work on The Dictator "until such time as there is at least a change in the European war situation." The Chaplin publicity department said this could not be true because Chaplin was hard at work cutting the film.

> Deanna Durbin sent 500 of her recordings to London, where they would be rushed to soldiers at the front.

> Timid citizens were frightened out of their wits when they ran info bruisers in Nazi uniforms swaggering down the Hollywood streets. This was no evidence of a fifth column in California, but an outward sign that the studios have sensed a new market, are furiously manufacturing anti-Nazi films like M. G. M.'s Escape and Mortal Storm, Fox's Four Sons and I Married a Nazi.

> Samuel Goldwyn announced that for his next picture he planned to borrow David Niven from the British Army.

> Elsa Basserman, German refugee wife of 70-year-old German refugee Actor Albert Basserman (Dr. Ehrlich's Magic Bullet), sent shivers down the spines of M. G. M. producers and publicity men by handing Hitler some bouquets in an interview with a U. P. reporter. Reason: Frau Basserman still has some relatives in Germany.

> Cinemactor Melvyn Douglas, who is now busily denying he ever was a fellow traveler, was named lieutenant colonel of intelligence in California's National Guard. His "duty": to make public and radio speeches come M Day. Wags suggested that "Comrade" Harry Bridges might be given command of the militia.

> Most ominous news came from southeastern Europe, long the source of Hollywood's false hair. Mobilization in the Balkans hampered progress on nine current wig pictures.

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