Cinema: Shorts: Jan. 2, 1939

> Ten biggest box-office stars of the year, listed by Motion Picture Herald in its annual poll of 10,000 independent U. S. theatre owners, and representing for the first time stars of only two of Hollywood's major companies:

1) Shirley Temple (20th Century-Fox)

2) Clark Gable (MGM)

3) Sonja Henie (20th Century-Fox)

4) Mickey Rooney (MGM)

5) Spencer Tracy (MGM)

6) Robert Taylor (MGM)

7) Myrna Loy (MGM)

8) Jane Withers (20th Century-Fox)

9) Alice Faye (20th Century-Fox)

10) Tyrone Power (20th Century-Fox)

> In London, managers of a new newsreel theatre announced an innovation: installation of 16 mm. (half-size) film-projection machines to show amateurs' scoops of news events. In Manhattan, the Newsreel Theatres Inc. announced plans for regular showings of amateur and professional 16 mm. news shorts at Rockefeller Center's new newsreel theatre.

> In Hollywood, Charlie Chaplin planned to start work on his next picture (an all-talkie), first in three years, before January 15. Chaplin wrote the story, will act two parts, one his famed tramp. Title: The Dictator. In Germany, the Hamburger Fremdenblatt charged that Chaplin had been "commissioned" to make the film by Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes (see p. 5), as "propaganda against a State with which the United States is at peace."

> In Hollywood, two pictures based on the Musica scandal (see p. 29) were rushed into production: The Drug King, probably starring Donald Crisp (Warner Bros.); The Great Drug, Swindle, probably starring Edward G. Robinson (Columbia).