Picture Show Articles

Credit: Contributed by vicky brookes. Many thanks!


1).From Picture Show annual of 1934:

The White Sister (MGM)

F. Marion Crawford's beautiful, tragic romance, which was made into a silent film with Lillian Gish and Ronald Colman, is brought to you on the talking screen by MGM, starring the beautiful Helen Hayes as Angela Chiaramonte and the ruggedly handsome Clark Gable as Giovanni Severi. Angela Chiaramonte has been brought up strictly by her father, who's wife ran away with another man shortly after Angela's birth, and is engaged to another man she does not love. But at her first meeting with Giovanni Severi, a young airman, she falls in love. Despite her father's stern disapproval, Angela insists on marrying Giovanni, and through this her father meets with his death. For a while Angela is conscience-stricken, but Giovanni pleads with her, and when he comes to say goodbye to her (as war has broken out), they plan to be married when he returns. But Giovanni is brought down behind the enemy lines, and Angela receives an official notice of his death. Feeling that life holds nothing more for her, she enters a convent, and Giovanni returns to claim her too late. She will not break her vows, and his attempts to make her do so are in vain. Finally, he leaves her, to be fatally injured in an air raid, while Angela is left to spend her life in the peace and tranquility of the convent.

Both Miss Hayes and Mr. Gable are a delight to watch in this film. Although it seems an unusual picture for Mr. Gable, as we are accustomed to watching him in rugged, and often comedic, roles, he plays the part magnificently, and shows us what a fine actor he really is. Miss Hayes' youthful prettiness is perfectly suited to her role, and this, their first screen pairing, is a picture that should not be missed! Both actors turn out splendidly convincing performances, and (as I am sure many who have seen them will tell you) I hope they will soon be placed together again in another picture so suited to their individual talents.


2) From picture show annual of 1936:

EX-TOMBOY

In 1910, On October 6, Carol Jane Peters made her entry into the world at Fort Worth, Indiana. Even then, at such an early age, she had the attractive blonde hair that would make her a recognized star in later years, but was speedily developed into an inveterate tomboy by her two elder brothers, Frederick and Stuart. At school she won medals for sprinting and long jumping, and she rode a horse well and as often as she could from the age of ten. In fact, no one seeing her then could have foretold her developing into the exotic beauty the screen knows today as Carole Lombard.

When Carol was 6 years old, her mother, attracted by the Californian climate, moved to Los Angeles, and Carol, whose school theatricals decided her upon acting as a career, naturally turned to film work. Because of her riding ability, she appeared in several westerns with Buck Jones and Tom Mix. Her career was doing terribly well when a car crash disfigured her horribly. However, the modern miracle of plastic surgery returned her to the screen even lovelier than before, but by then her contract had lapsed and she was glad to become a bathing beauty for a year. Then she played in a film from which her part was eliminated entirely. Not, however, before another director had seen what was at first left in, and cast her in Bill Boyd's film: "Power". Since then, as the saying goes, she has never looked back.

Lombard was the name given to her when she took up film work, and the "e" she added to her Christian name as the result of frenzied calculation and a deep belief in numerology. She lives in the San Fernando valley, halfway between Los Angeles and the sea, but does not have either her two brothers or her mother publicized. She is restless and ambitious, and she adores travelling.  She has an irrepressible sense of fun, is five feet and two inches tall, and has blonde hair. One of the most popular girls in Hollywood, she loves music, parties, dancing, late nights, and has many superstitions. Her film credits include :"No Man Of Her Own", and this year's "Twentieth Century".

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