Cinema: The New Pictures: May 10, 1937

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Producer Fanchon, 42, was Fanny Wolf, daughter of a Los Angeles clothing store proprietor. She studied piano; her brother Mike (Marco) fiddle. Together they entertained at lodge parties and picnics, graduated to a dinner show in Tait's famed San Francisco restaurant. Fanchon & Marco embellished their act with other specialties, began to play theatre dates in their spare time. When the demand grew they organized a second company, coalesced their troupe in a musical show Sunkist which they took to Broadway. Two weeks later the Southern Pacific Railroad accepted Marco's note for $2,800 to transport the company back to San Francisco. The note was paid out of profits from the original San Francisco units. Soon the S. P. was transporting Fanchon & Marco's show up and down the west coast, then it was going all over the U. S.—52 units a year. For the young Wolfs had had a bright idea. Small cinema houses wanted to stage shows but could not afford them. Fanchon & Marco offered units at a reasonable price, equipped them and rehearsed them in Hollywood, sent them out complete with costumes, scenery and songs. Their studio on Sunset Boulevard near Western became a factory for mass production of 15-minute shows. They needed bright youngsters who would work cheap. Janet Gaynor swung on a chandelier from the stage of Loew's State in Los Angeles; Myrna Loy's rice-powdered legs pranced in many a chorus; Bing Crosby, shaking with stage fright, croaked Mississippi Mud. A buxom girl soprano who had worked with them in Tait's signed a Metropolitan opera contract in a round, florid hand: Mary Lewis. Others who drew Fanchon & Marco checks were Martha Raye, June Knight, Mitchell & Durant, Eleanore Whitney, Johnny Downs.

Fanchon was the creative brains of the outfit. She built her whole show around some novel production number, blending costumes and tunes to whatever the girls were doing. They came out on bicycles, skates and skis. They wore bunny costumes, appeared disguised as flowers, birds or animals. Fanchon & Marco, Inc. snowballed until theatres which had bought franchises from them became bankrupt and in order to keep units out they had to become theatre operators. Fanchon & Marco shrank from 52 units a year to two units a month.

Fanchon is married to William H. Simon, proprietor of a string of Los Angeles dairy lunches. They have adopted two children. She is a tall woman with aquiline features and wild hair who, like many over-energetic people, walks with a shuffle. She admires Strindberg's plays, feels that men make better actors than women and that her sex has little place in the production end of show business. "Once a woman stops being feminine, people don't like to have her around." Her present deal is the result of an interview with Adolph Zukor in which she presented an idea for making her own pictures for Paramount release. Zukor persuaded her to produce with studio money.