Clara Baskill’s Hollywood (#3)
By: Joe Shetina
Tags: Movies, Old Hollywood, Gossip, Fiction, Film

Clara Baskill’s Hollywood (#3)

Reprinted from the Los Angeles Gazette: Monday, May 16, 1938

HOLLYWOOD — The silver screen’s next idol stepped off the 10:15 train from Topeka this morning. At least, that’s what Preeminent’s publicity department would have us believe. As one of several admirers gathered at La Grande for the public unveiling, yours truly was one of the first to get a look at Carole Cole, the 17-year-old winner of Preeminent’s landmark Screen Star contest. She is a comely girl with a thin, bird-like frame and a fresh smile. Her hair is a dull shade of sandy brown, sure to be dyed, and her eyes a crisp blue. At an angle, she looks not unlike the rosy-cheeked Holly Ferrands, Olympus’ glamor gal of the late 20s. Though I suspect her look has already been tinkered with a bit, Preeminent will no doubt make even more changes over the next several months to fashion her look for the screen. If they even use the girl, that is.

Cole was accompanied by two studio handlers on the journey while Preeminent’s first lady, Mrs. Gelding (wife of studio head Travis Gelding) was waiting on the platform to welcome her. Mrs. Gelding led an official entourage that included stylist Greta Hummel and publicity man Herb Gooley. The dutiful first lady drummed some intrigue before the train’s arrival, plugging her husband’s newest big picture, the family showbusiness drama The Connellys of 14th Street, opening next month. Her emphatic praise was soon drowned out — though not without a fight — by the wailing of the train whistle… the moment of the unveiling had arrived.

Hailing from a rural Kansas hamlet of only 700 people, Carole Cole already seems made to handle the frenzy of snap bulbs and clicking cameras. She answered reporters’ questions succinctly and with an innocent sort of home-spun wit. One would think she had had hours to consider her answers. Envious youngsters lined the platform, already begging for the girl’s autograph, which she signed with a radiant, unwavering smile before being whisked away by Mrs. Gelding and her entourage.

But Miss Cole will have to wait a little longer to reap the benefits of her overnight fame. She still must complete several courses in etiquette and elocution to refine those flat Midwestern vowels. Chances are, we won’t know if Preeminent’s gamble will pay off until next summer at the earliest.

TERRINE OF ALFIE

Everyone’s entitled to a bad day, right? Apparently, no one knows this better than former Olympus performer Ronald Harrowman. The Brownie and Barracks star was reported to have been less than charitable to a group of young fans who mobbed him as he was exiting a restaurant with daughter, Rita. The actor, when asked what he had had for dinner, retorted with a deliciously ghoulish answer: “Terrine of Alfie.”

Alfie Bannister is the head of the troubled Olympus studio, who opted not to renew Harrowman’s contract at the end of last year.

THE HUNT IS ON

Frieling International might have to move out of its humble home on the Olympus lot. A deluge of flowers, chocolates, and personalized lotion baskets from every actress in town have become so troublesome that Frieling’s assistant has had to rent out another office on the lot to accommodate them. Sporting signatures from the likes of Arden Miller, Florence Roos, Cynthia Walden, Maureen Goddell, and even Barbara Tunstall (who just celebrated her 34th birthday), these wheel-greasing offerings make it clear: the hunt to fill the roles of Henry VIII’s wives in the much-anticipated Frieling-Metropolitan co-production of The Six Wives of Henry VIII is on. Though the title would suggest a plethora of casting opportunities, it is the role of King Henry’s second wife, the doomed Anne Boleyn, that is the apple of these ladies’ eye. All would give their own heads to play such a meaty, tragic part. Hopefully it won’t come to that. But in Hollywood, who knows?

RETIRE THE FOSSILS

1937 was not the banner year the motion picture industry needed. Numbers for big-budget pictures and B-calibers alike are way down across the board and studio heads are currently drafting a list of requests to theater owners.

The Theater Owners Organization have already offered a response: “Make better pictures and retire the fossils.”

The industry’s been clawing at stability for the better part of a year. Could this ultimatum mean a drastic reshuffling of power among Hollywood’s best and brightest?

Time will tell — and then I’ll tell you.

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Born Claire Luisa Braun on March 16, 1904 in Carbondale, Illinois, Clara Baskill dreamed of becoming as famous as the stars she would later cover in her syndicated column. However, after years dancing in the chorus and landing small character parts in the movies, she was barely making ends meet. She was becoming more renowned for stories of her famous co-stars’ onset behavior than she ever was for her own acting. These tall tales became the toast of Hollywood parties, soon becoming legendary enough for renowned newspaper publisher, Humphrey Douglas Bradshaw, to offer her a weekly gossip column in his Los Angeles Gazette newspaper.

At its height, Clara Baskill’s Hollywoodland averaged nearly 35 million readers. Hollywood acknowledged her as a direct conduit between stars and their adoring public. Baskill’s pile of cease and desists was as big as her pile of fan letters. From her typewriter, she made celebrities out of nobodies, ground stars into dust, and shined a light on a world whose glamor and intrigue rivaled anything it projected on a silver screen.

Baskill wrote for the Los Angeles Gazette, LA Magnifier, The Angeleno, and Medley. She also published five books over her nearly fifty-year career. She died on October 10, 1992, at the age of 88.