Argus (Melbourne, Vic. : 1848 - 1957), Tuesday 23 December 1947, page 9


GOSSIP AMONG STARS

By BEAUCAIRE

The Old Hairpin Gag

GINGER ROGERS effectively

put to use the old gag about a girl being able to fix anything with a bent hairpin on the set of It Had to be You at Columbia recently. A tiny screw worked-loose from a big camera and rolled off to that secret spot where all loose screws go. Work looked like being held up indefinitely while the workshop was rifled for an-other screw of that size. But ginger proffered a hairpin, and it worked. With the camera held together by the piece of bent wire, the morn-ing's shooting was completed accord-ing to schedule.

Jean Simmons for Boston

JEAN SIMMONS, young British

film actress, who recently paid a brief but hectic visit to Melbourne, sails for New York after she has completed the location scenes for Blue Lagoon on the Yasawa Islands, 200 miles NW of Suva. Jean will

spend a fortnight or so in the States

before returning to England to com-plete the film. Most of her days in America will be spent in Boston, where her sister, Edna, who started Jean off as a ballet dancer-which in-cidentally led her into a movie career-is living as the wife of a

GI.

MARGARET O'BRIEN GREETS YOU

Stage Hit for Screen

F|HILIP YORDAN, author of the

American stage hit, Anna Lucasta, has closed a partnership deal with Columbia for the production of the play as a motion picture. He will write the script.

Rows With Rank

PATRICIA ROC has left the cast

of Sydney Gilliat's version of Norman Collins' book, London Be-longs to Me. The English actress was cast for the part of the London flibbertigibbet, Doris Josser, and

didn't like it.

Although the Rank Organisation has been working on the picture for over a month now, it's not been a happy experience for anyone. Pat decided to leave because she was fed up with Cockney roles. Susan Shaw, who has done ia good job in It Always Rains On Sunday as a girl no better than she should be, gets the part of

Doris.

Margaret Lockwood has also been rowing with Rank over the type of roles, given her. Tiff has now been patched up with a new part for Mar-

garet.

Nothing Secret Here

ALTHOUGH she lives a nice,

quiet life off the screen as the wife of producer Walter Wanger, Joan Bennett-one-time sweet young thing of the movies-leads a hectic existence in her film characterisa-

tions.

Her part in Woman in the Window started it. Her still more vicious role in Scarlet Street carried on the cycle. Now, in the Diana Production for Universal-International release, * Secret Beyond the Door, she is the wife of a man who makes a hobby of collecting murder rooms. She

wears the outfit illustrated in the

film-possibly to» counteract all the secret goings on with something^more

open.

Joan must appreciate the thriller , type- of part, for Diana is her own producing company.

French Star for Hollywood

BARBARA LAAGE, blue-eyed

ash blonde, who had to flee Paris during the German occupation,

makes her film debut for MGM^in one of the most dramatic roles of the year. In BF's Daughter, this former star of the Paris Comedie Française

takes the part of a blind war refugee with whom Barbara Stanwyck sus-pects her husband-van Heflin-of falling in love. Robert Z. Leonard

directs.

Production "Scoop"

SIR ALEXANDER KORDA an-

nounces that he has acquirect-the noted producing team of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger. This pair made Colonel Blimp, Stairway to Heaven-considered best British film of the year - J Know Where I'm Going, and Black Narcissus. Their» first Korda production will be a C. S. Forester story, The Promotion of the Admiral, starring Ralph Richardson. Korda has also signed Robert Donat for the lead in his screen version of Terence Rattigan's London stage hit The Winslow Boy.