Rags & Riches

In 1905 squat Otto Langhanke was a window decorator in Quincy, Ill. Later he became a high-school German teacher and after that a chicken farmer. In 1917, he and his Portuguese wife moved to Chicago where their pretty 14-year-old daughter Lucille could take dancing and acting lessons to prepare for a career which might some day make them all comfortably rich.

In 1920, small Lucille Langhanke had ceased to exist. She had become Cinemactress Mary Astor. By 1925 she was leading lady for Douglas Fairbanks. Squat Otto Langhanke had long since retired from school-teaching and chicken-raising. He was a well-to-do Hollywood gentleman, accustomed to dressing in a cutaway. With his wife he lived in a $200,000 house equipped with a $15,000 swimming pool. Last week occurred a crucial development in the history of the Langhanke family. In Los Angeles, Otto Langhanke had given up his cutaway and was wearing what passed for rags when he asked a court to require Mary Astor to show cause why she should not support her father and mother. Indignant Otto Langhanke said his daughter earned from $1,500 to $2,750 a week, owned property worth $150,000. He and his wife, he claimed, were compelled to sell their furniture to buy food. A Superior Court judge signed the order. "Heartbroken" and weeping, Mary Astor, whose last picture was Easy to Love, told her side of the story: "I have never refused to support my parents. . . . I've done everything in the world for them. They insist on living in the mansion and I can't support them in extravagance. In 1930 I gave them $1,000 a month and my father borrowed $18,000 on the house. That made $30,000. He took it and built an immense swimming pool in the yard of the mansion, and they never use it. They want me to give them $25,000 to pay off the mortgage and I can't do it. "I've begged them to cut down expenses, but they won't. From 1920 to 1930, I gave my father $461,000 and of that amount I got not more than $200 a month." Mary Astor promised in future to support her family "in comfort but not extravagance." Wharf Angel (Paramount). It is a cinema tradition that the medium for introducing a new star should be a picture in which she performs as a prostitute with more principles than profits. In Wharf Angel Toy (Dorothy Dell) is a San Francisco bad girl, rehabilitated by her pure love for Como (Preston Foster). He is a soap box socialist hounded by the police for a murder he did not commit. Turk (Victor McLaglen), also in love with Toy, helps Como escape. This leads to two climactic moments which, like the heroine, appear to have been dredged up from the past: the one in which Como and Turk, after a trip to China and back spent in exhaustive conversation about their romances, finally discover that they love the same girl; the one in which Toy kisses Como through the bars of a jail after Turk has betrayed him to the police. Contrition moves Turk to give the $1.000 reward money to a lawyer for Como's defense.

That such an inept investigation of life among the dockrats should introduce Dorothy Dell to the U. S. cinema public is unfortunate but not disastrous. Paramount's latest discovery looks like a juvenile combination of Mae West and Jean Harlow, acts with considerable charm, sings capably. Unlike most new cinema stars, she speaks English without an accent. She comes from Hattiesburg, Miss., made her stage debut in New Orleans, acquired the title of Miss Universe at the Dallas Beauty Show in 1930. Florenz Ziegfeld saw her in a Manhattan benefit performance, gave her a small part in his 1931 Follies. When Ruth Etting fell ill, she took over her role on 15 minutes notice.

Dorothy Dell is 5 ft. 5 1/2 in. tall, weighs 125 lb.. has a better design than either of her prototypes. She lives in Hollywood with her mother, a descendant of Jefferson Davis, and a pack of Mississippi coon hounds. For fun, Dorothy Dell hires a raccoon from a Holly wood animal supply company, hunts it with her friends & dogs in Griffith Park. When the Dell hounds tree the coon, the hunt is over and the coon goes back to the supply company. Such coon hunting is her only exercise: she has a weak heart. An automobile accident last year frightened her so badly that she will no longer drive her Ford.

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