The Ely Miner

THE ELY MINER, ELY, MINN.

(Released by Western Newspaper Union.)

If that Victory Caravan appears anywhere in your vicinity you'll certainly want to see it. Players enlisted by the Hollywood Victory committee to tour for Army and Navy relief are Charles Boyer, Eleanor Powell, Merle Oberon, Rise Stevens, Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy, Bert Lahr, Frank McHugh, Ray MacDonald, Desi Arnaz, Cary Grant, James Cagney, Joan Bennett and Olivia de Havilland.

It wasn't hard for Paramount to line up a cast for "Wake Island"—Brian Donlevy, Robert Preston, Macdonald Carey, Albert Dekker and Barbara Britton lead it. But stunt pilots were a necessity—and only four could be found! Fifteen years ago there were at least 100 who vied for jobs in such pictures as "Wings" and "Hell's Angels"; now they're in the army, navy, marine corps and Royal Canadian Air force.

When Betty Jane Rhodes was a child actress, appearing in "Forgotten Faces," Herbert Marshall used to buy her miniature airplanes as gifts. Reginald Denny gave her two model planes with tiny gas engines. She's a welder in an aircraft plant in the new musical, "Priorities of 1942," completely surrounded by planes, and is air-minded enough to be perfectly happy.

Richard Lyons, seven-year-old son of Bebe Daniels and Ben Lyons, is carrying on with his screen career while his parents star on the radio in England instead of on the American screen. He has an important role in "Atlantic Convoy"; is playing an English refugee, which comes close to his own life.

Pat O'Brien's youngsters—Mavourneen, seven, and Sean, five, visited their father on location at the Alhambra airport for "He's My Old Man," and persuaded the technical advisor to take them on a flight. The "flight" consisted of taxiing from one end of the field to the other.

Lynn Martin appeared several weeks ago in a singing commercial on the air's Radio Theater, and received so much praise that when a night club sequence appeared in a later script she was promptly signed for it. Also, she was engaged to sing with Ray Noble's band on the Edgar Bergen show.

The last picture John Beal did in Hollywood before he went to New York to appear in a stage play was "The Man Who Found Himself," in which Joan Fontaine was getting her start. He gave her a pep talk, told her to stick to it and some day she'd win the Academy Award. She visited him on the set of "Atlantic Convoy" the other day. "I just came to tell you that you told me so!" she said.

Pat Friday, another young singer recently heard with Bergen, told Ray Noble that he played Cupid for her and her aviator-husband. They were listening to his orchestra, at a Los Angeles hotel, and to its music her husband told her that she was the most beautiful girl in the world. She thinks the music had a lot to do with it. "But it was so beautifully done that I just had to marry him!"

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Jean Tennyson, star of "Great Moments in Music," has inaugurated a "Share Your Birthday With Men in the Service" campaign—she took her 45 pound birthday cake to the Stage Door Canteen in New York and divided it among men of the armed forces.

ODDS AND ENDS—Evelyn Keyes wears exotic perfumes—so pity Glenn Ford, playing opposite her in "He's My Old Man," as he's allergic to perfumes. . . Sounds like a record of some kind—in his first five pictures Roger Clark kissed Marlene Dietrich, Barbara Stanwyck, Lupe Velez, Ruth Ford and Eileen O'Hearn . . . Robert Ryan has reported to RKO Radio for one of the choicest roles ever handed a screen newcomer, that of the lead in "Name, Age and Occupation."

"Parachute Nurse" brought Marguerite Chapman and William Wright their first screen kiss—and when he grasped her the first time she slipped and turned her ankle!

Crime pays in Hollywood. William Powell can thank two detective roles for much of his popularity "Philo Vance" and "Nick Charles." Robert Montgomery did all right as an amateur sleuth in "Trouble for Two," "Live, Love and Learn" and "Fast and Loose." "Mr. Moto" was a gold mine for Peter Lorre; Basil Rathbone's famous as "Sherlock Holmes." Van Heflin's getting his start now—in "Kid Glove Killer" first—and at present he's playing the part of a super-sleuth in "Grand Central Killer."