Is it unfair to ask what Garret Hughes can see in Mildred Harris? Or vice versa?

“Forbidden Fruit” is the next DeMille production in titular succession to “Why Change Your Husband?” Just think of all we are going to see of Elinor Fair, Gloria Swanson and others. The Los Angeles Hosiery Hucksters and Lingerie Lizards have entered a protest against the continuous overtime.

Oft in the still and starry night we have paused to wonder why DeMille is willing to share so much of his favorites with the general public.

Temperament? If you want to know the meaning of the word ask Maxwell Karger, director general of Metro production, about Ina Claire. Karger, being a diplomat, probably won’t answer you. But anyone else at the studio can tell you that Ina has the tempestuous, rock-bound coasts of Maine licked to a frazzle forty ways when it comes to the stormy stuff. Ina is only making her screen debut in this Metro picture but she knew what she wanted—and by all hemlock cantankerousness, she got it, too.

It takes some pepper pot to create any notice in a studio where Nazimova has worked.

Isn’t it rather sad, to say the least, to have fame affect some of our stars, as it does? Our attention has been directed to Charles Ray—rather more strongly to Mrs. Charles Ray. Charlie’s rise has affected her—so much ’tis said, that there is a dearth of chauffeurs at the Ray villa. This in spite of the fact that a half score or more have entered employ—and rather quickly tired of it. One of ’em tells us his reasons, and we admit they would peeve a brass Buddha.

And, by the way, was it Mrs. Ray whose attitude toward a grocer’s delivery boy who carelessly let his Ford drop a bit of oil on a macadamized driveway, caused so much mirth around the colony lately?

An event long looked for in the Somborn household (Gloria Swanson of yore) has occurred, and a bouncing girl is announced. Months ago we were told that Gloria’s contract with DeMille, at a comparatively small salary, could be broken only by such an event. Mr. Somborn, being a picture magnate, is said to naturally have wanted to star his wife. Now the way may be open. We shall see.

Mutterings around a certain railroad ticket office in New York the other day, boded ill for the husband of the deceased Olive Thomas, had he dropped his dignity and approached in person. His valet, through association or education, we know not which, has picked up a domineering attitude, and the tantrums he went through over the phone at various times with every clerk in the office, got under the skin. “Don’t you know who my master is,” chirped the valet. And just as chipperly the railroad clerk said, “I do, and I don’t give a damn.”

Party of four, two staterooms on the Century huh? We are slightly curious, just slightly.

Would you believe it? There’s someone afraid he won’t be given credit for making “Uncle Sam of Freedom Ridge,” the propaganda picture which FILM TRUTH exploded in last month’s issue. The director, George Beranger, is the man. At that, Beranger is in the right. He is an A1 director, fully capable of making his own pictures. There was no need of anyone else claiming credit for “supervision.”

While on the subject of Levey’s fillum it might not be adverse to whisper that we have at hand letters from live wire exhibitors stating they have thrown it out of their houses after finding it purely propaganda.

From a press agent comes a screed concerning a production under way at Los Angeles called “The Perfect Man.” And in the cast we find a player named Andrew Sous. We’ll say so!

How soon are the dead forgotten! Ollie Thomas has not had time to get settled in her grave, when here we find brother Duffy reported gallavanting around New York one evening, imbibing the atmosphere, and then some, in company with a fair damsel who has a husband somewhere or other, and to whom an unbroken Arabian steed is as a lamb.

My, my, it does seem hard for a young lady to keep a “steady” in this dear Los Angeles these days. Take little Lottie Pickford for instance. Before going east, Gossip Row on the coast hummed with a hair pulling match said to have been staged very, very openly, with Lottie in the role of challenger, and a former Ziegfeld Follies beauty as defender. ’Twas said Lottie’s sweetie (who came on the scene following her divorce) had been weaned away by the newcomer. Hence the fireworks.

Anytime you see an “it” on the streets of Hollywood wearing English riding breeches wider than an embarrassed pancake, leather puttees wound round legs thinner than a producer’s heart; a waxed and pointed mustache sillier looking than shirred humming-bird’s eggs—lay a hundred to one bet that you are looking at a moving picture director pulling down a measly thousand a week. The question of the Sphinx: Must movie men of the studios look like Asses?

These here now fillums make strange bed-fellows. “Determination” now has in its cast both Lieut. Maynard, “the Flying Parson” and Maurice Costello, who used to appear every now and then in Brooklyn police courts to answer wifey’s objections to the pugilistic form of argument. Remember when “Cos” was the shining matinee idol of the screen?

The Unkindest Cut of All: One of our contemporaries discloses to a palpitating world the fact that Reeves Eason, the director, started life as a butcher.

George Walsh was anxious to wind up his Fox contract while brother Raoul was hitting on all twelve cylinders as an independent producer. Wonder how George feels about it now that Mayflower’s limping progress threatens to embarrass Raoul’s activities.

“Brewster’s Millions” is going to be made in pictures again. Producers must work on the theory that they were entirely successful in their efforts to kill off the earlier generations of fans.