If half the movie actors who've expressed a burning desire to trod the Broadway boards in stage plays this spring and summer manage to make good their ambitions, the studios may as well prepare right now to close shop—and darken a few thousand theatres along with them, writes Harold Heffernan in the "Oregonian." But, have no fears—they won't.
Spring, descending early on Hollywood, has ushered in its usual attack of morbid ennui—and "stage itis." However, the stage epidemic seems more contagious than ever before. Young and old actors alike, some with no previous platform experience, have fallen willing victims to the germ, The reason, according to veteran diagnosticians who've been watching the same situation for years, is that soaring temperatures and sluggish days have a tendency to stir the ham in the average actor. At his season he invariably begins regarding the camera as a devastating ogre—and thinks the only relief is a chance to strut his stuff before real, flesh audienees in the big town.
It isn't the money—for screen actors are the best paid entertainers on earth—but a desire to dangle from the other end of the rope and drink in that hoped-for applause that doesn't attend their lonely, machinelike efforts on the sound stages.
Inspired by a surprising revival of Broadway activity and better business al! along the road, movie players are Scanning plays of every description, consulting agents and begging their bosses for time off—just in case the right sort of material does suddenly pop out of nowhere.
Joan Crawford Feels the Call Joan Crawford has been pointing at Broadway (altogether hopelessly) for many years. Now she feels so strongly that the script of jungle film ("Strange Cargo") can be revised into a smashing stage hit that she's camping on the thresholds of MGM executives, imploring them to let her take it to Broadway—after the picture has played itself out, of course.
The novelty of such a situation has the studio intrigued, too, so don't be too surprised if "Strange Cargo" goes into a stage run, with the studio's onetime "Dancing Daughter," now a matured and determined actress, who fights doggedly for attention, enlarge ing upon the role she played so bril-hantly in the film.
Most forceful argument advanced by Joan is that her box office rating, in need of some rehabilitating after a series of disastrous flops, would be heightened by the innovation. That is interesting to MGM because its contract with Joan runs three more years, and at an extremely high salary figure.
Most Hollywood initiates fear the scathing rebukes likely to be hurled their way by the critics, but not Joan, She's willing and eager to brave jibes and ridicule just to get that one chance she's dreamed of over the years.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.