 By transcription, Bidwell McCormick takes you behind the scenes in Hollywood. There doesn't seem to be anything that escapes glamorizing in Hollywood. No matter what it is, sooner or later, they'll get around to making it appear more attractive. Well, the latest subject to undergo the Hollywood glamour treatment is ice. Yes, ice. The kind you skate on. For a recent picture, they needed pretty photogenic ice. Oh, the kind needed for Sonya Haney's picture. It's a pleasure, which was recently made in Technicolor. Yes, that's it. So the studio set out to glamorize the ice. Now, how on earth could ice be glamorized? Well, first, the freezing base was painted a brilliant green. Then, after water had been turned in and frozen solid, the color showed through and it looked mighty pretty under the powerful lights. However, when the first skater took off, it left a white trail behind him. Multiply that trail by 40 skaters, all crisscrossing, and it's easy to imagine how quickly the ice would become de-glamorized. Then that was the cue for the technical crew to get in the bright idea, huh? Yes, they first raised the temperature a little to melt the ice to a depth of about a half inch all over the rink. That accomplished the crew of workers equipped with spray guns, loaded with a vegetable dye, literally painted the ice itself. Then they froze everything solid. When they were finished, the skating surface was prettier than ever, and what's more, the skate marks didn't show on the thin layer of ice and it all photographed beautifully. Here are a few briefs about what the stars are doing. Boris Korloff will star in a picture titled Chamber of Horrors, inspired by Hogarth's famed drawing Bedlam. Dick Powell, currently on the nation's screens as co-star of RKO Radio's Murder My Sweet, will star in Cornered. This will be his second character role since he foresoaked crooning parts in pictures. Rohyd, story of a cowboy's rehabilitation in the most colorful period of the west, will continue the combination of John Wayne as star and Edward Demetric as director, which currently is making back to Batan. Tom Conway and Audrey Long will play the leading roles in RKO Radio's The Lie Detector, romantic comedy drama. New product of international pictures will include Gary Cooper's Western, along came Jones. Tomorrow is forever, starring Claudette Colbert, Orson Welles and George Brent, and the Sonya Haney Technicolor film, Countess of Monte Cristo. Philip Terry, currently featured in the gay romantic comedy with music, Americana, looks Irish, sounds slightly English and was born in San Francisco, spent his boyhood in the oil fields of Oklahoma and Texas. He likes clothes, but isn't foppish about them. He majored in English Literature and Math at Stanford, where he was a member of the Kaisai fraternity. He made good grades without studying too hard and became interested in acting through campus theatricals. Philip Terry is courteous and a little shy around strangers, slow to make friends but responsive and warm once he feels he knows people. Climbing ladders bothers him because height makes him nervous, and yet oddly enough he's a licensed pilot and a good one, passed his tests with unusually fine grades. He likes English and continental cooking, doesn't care particularly for hunting or fishing, has no yen to retire to the country or even live anyplace but a metropolitan area. His screen tastes run to the heavily dramatic. He's an avid football and track fan, follows Stanford's athletic fortunes closely. He studied the classics and modern drama at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London and toured the provinces playing stock. Philip Terry landed his first film contract by a screen test at one studio who turned it down but through an error sent it to another who signed him the following week. He calls Mrs. Terry, who is better known as Joan Crawford, twice a day from the set. But if you want to make him flair, refer to him as Mr. Crawford. And now a word from your local announcer. By transcription, Bidwell McCormick takes you behind the scenes in Hollywood. Securing the props for a motion picture production is a gigantic task and has to be started long in advance of the actual shooting schedule. There was a case, for example, of RKO's radio screen version of Pearl Buck's novel, China Sky, which was assigned for propping more than a year ago. Yes, and even before that, Gene Rossi, RKO property man was preparing notes and collecting props against the actual time when they would be needed. For instance, such items were secured as a real hand-pumping fire cart, the kind which was used during the early days of the Jap attacks on Shanghai. That cart, I understand, had to be brought to this country by a carnival which fled the Orient. Yes, and the Chinese carrying poles had to be secured, the kind on which the Cooley's balance loads for carrying over their shoulders. And real Chinese baskets had to be secured and laid away against the time they would be needed. A bamboo dipper with cherry wood handle, a Chinese water bowl and bathtub were some of the other items supplied, and they all had to be genuine because they're bound to be someone and often many in the audience would notice a difference. Hollywood's storage rooms are chock-full of quaint and interesting pieces. Many of them are not used for years at a time. And now here are some news briefs from the studios. Skinny Ennis has been signed for RKO Radio's musical, Radio Stars Unparayed. Back to Batan is the final title chosen for the John Wayne starring story of guerrilla warfare hitherto called the Invisible Army. Lee Harline has completed the music for Bouquet of Lace, the feature ballet number in George White's Scandals of 1945. Joan Davis and Jack Haley will sing, I Wake Up in the Morning and It's You. Voice of Japan's premier, Kuniaki Kouiso, will be heard in RKO Radio's First Man into Tokyo. A transcription of the voice exhorting Japs to sacrifice everything to repulse the enemy has been secured by producer J. Robert Bren. It will open the story. Definite and final plans for Danny Kay's next picture initiated by Samuel Goldwyn before his departure for Europe and completed since his return were announced by the producer. Goldwyn stated that the kid from Brooklyn starring Danny Kay would go before the cameras in Hollywood within the next few weeks. Randolph Scott, big blue-eyed and six-foot-two, learned to ride to Fox and Hounds in Virginia. He's had a lot of adventures in sports such as clinging for hours to an overturned sailing boat in shark-infested waters near the Bahamas, but he modestly says, of course I'm not the adventurous type in private life. You're likely to overlook Randolph Scott's versatility on the screen. He's probably at his best in roles such as that of a love-muddle doctor in Pearlbuck's China Sky, a romance in which he overlooks the charms of Dr. Ruth Warwick at first, though she's right at his side in a remote China village, and he falls for Ellen Drew in far-off America. Scott's personal romantic history may have no bearing on such oversights, but to look at him you'd guess he might be the fellow to do just that sort of thing. Follow a principle, right or wrong, and admit his mistakes, if any, later. Observers of Randy's private life in Hollywood point out that outside of his working hours he's living the life of a southern gentleman just as though he'd stayed in Virginia. He even had a plantation in San Diego County for a while, but sold it when labor couldn't be obtained to run it. He now lives on a big beach mansion which norm a townage formerly owned. Scott takes an early morning swim in the ocean regardless of season or weather, finds time for a lot of golf with his friends Kerry Grant and Fred Astaire. His domestic life is happy. He's now married to pretty youthful Patricia Stillman of San Francisco. Randolph Scott is very democratic in his taste in literature, art, and in the people he likes. His modesty has buried in the past an excellent school athletic record, and he can still start on most folks by his ability to kick and pass a football. An hour word from your local announcer. By transcription, Bidwell McCormick takes you behind the scenes in Hollywood. Colored water has always been used on the Hollywood movie sets in place of wine or hard liquors, but now a substitute seems to be needed for cigarettes. I understand that Columbia Studios resorted to corn silk recently when they had to film so many scenes in which cigarettes were smoked in the Irene Dunn Alexander Knox picture over 21. Well, that's what I've been informed. On account of the studio's fast dwindling stock, a new system was worked out by the property department whereby cigarettes were hand rolled, and only the outer one-third section was actually tobacco. So that's how the corn silk came to be used, hm? That's the way the story goes. Studio experts recommended that the remaining space be filled with corn silk because a survey showed that in 99% of all movie scenes, cigarettes are only smoked for a few puffs anyway. When Chester Morris and George E. Stone had to do a jitterbug number for a scene in the new Boston Blackie film, Surprise in the Night, the studio assigned Jewel McGowan, former California State Jitterbug Champion, to coach them and act as their swing advisor. Jewel spent a couple of hours teaching them the proper steps and the rhythmic cavorting. I think I have it clear in my mind, panted Morris at the end of the instruction, but I'm not so sure my feet understand. Convinced that there's nothing an actor worthy of a name shouldn't know, Patriarch Charles Coburn, who's been a trooper for more than half a century, is putting his spare time between scenes on Columbia's Over 21 to good use and he's learning to do the Samba. Shirley Temple will be the model for a national comic strip. William Henley, New York cartoonist, disclosed in Hollywood recently. Henley has been commissioned to draw the strip, which will be based on the character of Coralus Archer in Kiss and Tell for newspaper syndication. Cornel Wilde has found Douglas Fairbank Sr. an inspiration for his last two movie roles. In order to get atmosphere for his part of Aladdin in Columbia's Technicolor Fantasy of Old Baghdad, A Thousand and One Nights, Cornel purchased a 16-millimeter print of Doug's old silent film, The Thief of Baghdad. Recently, when Cornel was cast in the bandit of Sherwood Forest on the same lot, he sent out an SOS for a print of Fairbank's Robin Hood. Born in New York City, October 13th, 1915, Cornel Wilde crossed the Atlantic a year later with his family when his father was called home to Budapest to join his regiment as a captain during World War I. In the Revolution, which subsequently ravaged Hungary, Cornel remembers a harrowing ride in a horse-drawn cart bound for a refuge in Budapest. Soon afterward, in 1920, Captain Wilde managed to obtain passports to return to his family in the United States under the immigration quota. Cornel advanced through grade school, New York Townsend Harris Hall High School to Columbia University and then to City College for pre-medical course, finishing the three-year curriculum in two and winning a scholarship in the College of Physicians and Surgeons at Columbia University. But his career in medicine faded as he became active in the Theodore Irvin School of the Theater. He gave up his scholarship to join a stock company at Segerty's, New York. Next came Moonover Mulberry Street. When the company went on tour, Cornel dropped out to go into a theater guild production. Love is not so simple in which he played opposite Ina Claire. An engagement in Romeo and Juliet brought him to Hollywood where he went to work for Warner Brothers, after which he went on contract to 20th Century Fox, which company his contract is now shared by Columbia. Cornel Wild will shortly be seen in A Thousand and One Nights and The Bandit of Sherwood Forest. And now a word from your local announcer.