August 29, 1944

You can never tell what our unpredictable movie heads are going to do when they decide they want a play. Jack Warner, for instance, has purchased the film rights to “The Visitor” before it even opened on Broadway or had a rehearsal. But he had a reason and, I think, a good one.

There’s really no news in Jean Arthur’s announcement she is not making any more pictures.

The beautiful home of Maurice Chevalier at Cannes has been destroyed by bombs.

Marlene Dietrich has informed her agent she won’t be able to fulfill picture commitments until 1945.

I wonder if you remember Robert Morley … while London was being bombed by robots [Robert] was undergoing an operation in a hospital when the building was hit. The operation was completed under great difficulties and he was taken to a safe place in the country to recuperate.

VIRGO: Excellent planetary influences for matters pertaining to investments, determining profits and carrying out responsible tasks, orders. Be optimistic in romance, home affairs.

From the Philadelphia Inquirer via Fultonhistory.com.

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August 28, 1944

I had just put down “The History of Rome Hanks and Kindred Matters” when — flash! — came the word that MGM had bought the Lt. Joseph Stanley Pennell novel for $60,000. Here, my friends, is a powerful story of the Civil War, so powerful, in fact, it takes a good strong stomach to get past some of the passages. But not since Ernest Hemingway and Thomas Wolfe has an American written a first book with the beauty and force of Pennell, and the reading public is responding at the rate of 13,000 a week.

Two nights running, David Wark Griffith ran “Intolerance” and Birth of a Nation” for Preston Sturges, which inclines me to believe his deal with Sturges will be closed any day.

Director Mike Curtiz starts his 18th year at Warners … Certainly Dalton Trumbo won’t have to worry where his next meal comes from for the next few years … I remember so well Carole Lombard’s interest in Helen Deutsch’s story “But Is It Love,” the comedy she thought was so right for her. She took an option on it before she died and expected to interest one of the studios in making it. After Carole’s death, Helen Deutsch lost interest in the picture because she had set her heart on having Carole play in it. Now the story is being rewritten and will again be offered for sale.

VIRGO: You are in same planetary boat with Leoites today, therefore benefit by advice to them. Enjoy wholesome pleasures in free time. Avoid extremes.

From the Philadelphia Inquirer via Fultonhistory.com

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