Kfsar I his I
* Children of Stars
* A Break for Nancy
* Goodman's Cornetist
- !v Virginia Vale
SOME day when you young
sters are grown up, and
see by the papers that Ellen
Powell is going places with
this or that young man, you’ll
know how the old-timers feel
when they read that Sue
Vidor has been going about
with Buddy Armstrong.
You’ll probably say, ‘‘Why I re
member when that girl was born—
way back in 1938! Her mother was
a well-known movie star, Joan Blon
dell, and her father was a movie
star, too—Dick Powell, and a mas
ter of ceremonies on the radio, too.
But, of course, you don't see them in
pictures now.”
And it seems like yesterday that
Sue Vidor was playing that tiny
little piano, and her handsome
young parents were standing there,
smiling at her. Her mother was a
famed movie actress — Florence
Vidor, who retired to marry Jascha
Heifetz, the violinist. Sue’s father
is King Vidor, the director.
And, speaking of the passing of
time, when she started work recent
ly on “Three Loves
Has Nancy,” Janet
Gaynor also started
out on her twelfth
year of making
movies. Few others
have stayed at the
top for so long.
Which reminds me
that in “Tropic Hol
iday,” the new Mar
tha Raye-Bob Burns
comedy, one of
Bob’s scenes is a Janet Gaynor
burlesque of the one
in “A Star Is Born” in which
Fredric March swam out to sea
to his death. People who liked the
Gaynor-March hit picture won’t
care for that.
Having fought with Columbia and
had her contract bought off, Grace
Moore departed for Paris, where
she will start right in making pic
tures again. She’ll do both a French
and an English version of “Louise.”
And, as French pictures are rarely
up to the United States standard,
she probably won’t like the result.
Nancy Kelly, aged seventeen, has
been booked to play the heroine in
“Splinter Fleet,” and a lot of people
in Hollywood are asking who she is
and where she comes from and why
she should be given so important a
■MMMMMmiMm"' - - im—riri—I
NANCY KELLY
role in such an expensive picture.
But at seventeen Nancy is a veteran
who rates important assignments.
She acted in the movies made in the
East as a child, but gave it up 10
years ago because she had reached
the awkward age, and devoted her
self to radio. She was going strong
a year ago when she got the role
of Gertrude Lawrence’s daughter in
“Susan and God,” a successful play
that was one of the New York thea
ters’ big hits this year. Nancy was
a hit, too, Darryl Zanuck saw her
performance and bought her run-of
the-play contract, so now she’s back
in the movies again.
-*
You can’t tell, these days, where
a swing musician will bob up. When
Benny Goodman and his band were
playing an engagement in Texas
last year everybody for miles
around who liked swing music
came to dance. During the inter
mission a young man with a cornet
in his hand came to Goodman and
asked to play for him. Goodman
took him into an adjoining room,
Jess Stacey sat down at the piano,
and the young man began to toot.
“Buddy,” said Goodman when
he had finished. “Whatever your
name is, you can join my band. By
the way, where did you learn to
put a horn through its paces?”
"I’m a member of the Salvation
Army band,” replied Henry James,
who's been a member of Goodman’s
gang ever since.
'.I'
ODDS AND ENDS—Jack Oukie is
taking bows on having lost a lot uf
weight, and George Uujt is trying to
reduce . . . The Chinese government
has offered Ann Sheridan’s husband,
Edward Norris, a lot oj money to fly
for them . . . Fred Allen rushed off to
Maine when his year’s broadcasting
was finished: he’s eighteen miles from
Portland (Maine, not Hoff a,) and
swears that this year the radio fans
won’t find him . . . They did, last
summer, three weeks after his vacation
started . . . Remember “Three Smart
Girls," the Deanna Durbin picture?
There'll be a sequel, “Three Smart
Girls Grow Up,” with the same cast.
<2> Western Newspaper Union.
/ \ I ¥ ¥ ¥7 lVTr I ^ A T ¥" T 1VT ¥~A ¥7^ I ¥ This month Japan's conquest of China
I I ■¥ I l^i i \ 8 i I H I \ I I A F¥ • c,lters its second year. In retrospect,
AS ■- i Xl -M. X A. AJ A ■ As X 1 M^S _i_J 11 • we examine the past twelve months . . .
This man’s mother never thought her son
would start a war. He is Sadao Miyajaki, a
marine whose "abduction” caused the Japs
to send out landing parties at Shanghai, fol
lowed by clashes with the Chinese.
On August 12 Japanese armored cars rumbled from their Shanghai
headquarters after Lieut. Isao Oyama and Seaman Yozo Saito,
members of an inquisitive landing party, were killed by Chinese troops
of the peace preservation corps on August 9. On August 14, Shanghai’s
fail began.
Earlier, on July 7, Jap troops killed and wounded 200 Chi
nese near Peiping in the “Marco Polo bridge incident,” the
outgrowth of another search for a “missing” Jap soldier. In
succeeding days, which brought repeated conflicts, crowds of
harassed civilians milled through Peiping. This was war!
r iii m a
Japan invited international complications August
26 when Sir Hughe KnatchbuIl-IIugesson, British Am
bassador to China, was seriously wounded by Jap
aviators near Nanking. Result: Apology from Tokyo.
i
United States indignation over the war came August 30 when the
S. S. President Hoover was bombed by Chinese planes. A few days
earlier Jap planes bombed Shanghai’s business area, caused 600 casual
ties when two department stores collapsed.
? :r~—nr rrrn i. .. him.... .
Shanghai civilians were to die by the hundreds before
Japan forced the city into submission. Bombs were no re
specters of age. On August 22, hundreds of civilian casualties
resulted when Shanghai’s south railway slation was struck.
Finally, on November 9, Shanghai fell after one of the war's
fiercest battles. It was also on this day that Taiyan capitulated. By
this time world indignation was aroused at ruthless Japanese
slaughter. But tersely worded messages to Tokyo brought only
j official shoulder shrugs.
mmt ■ ■■ ■mi w
United States wrath flared again December 12 when the
U. S. S. Panay was bombed and sunk on the Yangtze river.
Also bombed was a United States oil tanker. Thirteen were
wounded and four died, including Sandro Sandri (above),
Italian newspaper correspondent.
Now the battle turned to Nanking, but meanwhile
peaceful Shantung province saw war as China struck
back unexpectedly. Two United States warships
rushed to Tsingtao to protect 300 Americans. Several
Jap-owned silk mills were destroyed.
Nanking fell amkl fierce slaughter of Chinese. Little
wonder that Jap soldiers found small welcome when they
tried to make friends with Nanking’s shuddering populace.
China's future looked dull as 1938 hove into view and Gen.
Chiang Kai-shek took his troops to the interior.
-v •. x.-.v.-.v-.v
Temporarily, the tide turned. Chinese in
flicted 2,000 casualties at Taierchwang and
on April 19 Hsu-Huan-sheng (above) led
'Chinese planes on a “raid” over Japan,
dropping pamphlets instead of bombs.
...; ‘ ' |
Japan's troops rumbled onward. Suchow fell May 19 and Nipponese
army officials announced that Hankow, temporary headquarters for the
Chinese government, was next on their list. By this time China had made
good her threat to offer stiff resistance. The march to Suchow had been
marked by several disarming counter-attacks that stunned the Japs.
.-. - - .jSfcj--' vi
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. , M , . / . ... ■ •■: : - . . • * t:
Peaceful Canton to the south, only a few miles from Great Britain’s Hongkong, was
bombed May 28 when blood-mad Japanese aviators killed 500 and wounded 1,000. But
this was only a start. For successive days the rain of death continued until parts of Canton
were stench-filled shambles. On June 5 an estimated 50 Jap planes bombed the city for an
hour. Protests were ignored.
Japan’s drive on Hankow has not been easy. Her troops pushed up the Yellow river
traditionally “China’s sorrow’’ because Its periodic floods cause hunger and death. But now it
became “Japan’s sorrow” when June rains sent the stream over its banks and trapped
Nipponese warriors. Meanwhile, Japanese back home are tired of war. But the all-powerful
militarists vow they will pound China Into submission If It takes ten years.