The box office, of course, is the one master key to popularity. New play-e may enjoy a sudden flare and then sputter out like a defective skyrocket. Simone Simon was that way. She gave great promise in "Girl's Dormitory," but fell far short of fulfilling it in three successive years of effort. Now she has gone back to France.
Other touted personalities have slipped off contract lists in surprising numbers this year. Victor McLaglen has just been dropped by Twentieth Century-Fox, and so has Louise Hovick, the former strip-teasing Gypsy Rose Lee.
ctor Moore, Helen Broderick, Miriam Hopkins, Milton Perle and Jack Oakie are a few of those cut off at RKO in a general housecleaning. Eddie Cantor, Kay Francis, Dick Foran, Beverly Roberts, Dixie Dunbar, Rochelle Hudson, Ian Hunter, Patric Knowles, June Travis, Lily Pons, Hugh Herbert, Leslie Howard, Gladys Swarthout, Francis Lederer, Sylvia Sidney, Ann Sothern and the Mauch twins are a few who have left various other lots.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.