THE NEWSREEL MAN.

Auckland Star, Volume LXV, Issue 17, 20 January 1934, Page 6 (Supplement)

THE NEWSREEL MAN.

WRATH OF THE GREAT.

OLIVERS WHO MET ROLANDS. ABYSSINIA SOLVES THE PROBLEM. (By JOHN C. MOFFITT.) ("Auckland Star" and N.A.N A. Copyright.) 111. A newsrecl man never knows where fo look for tenderness and gentleness. If thero is anywhere you would look for a soft answer it is from poeta. But Italy's great lyricist, Gabriele d'Annnnzio, threw a brick at Bixio Alberni when Bixio wanted him to see the birdie.

Gabriele had offered a reward of a gold cup to tho winner of a motor boat race, but when the race was over be reneged (possibly taking advantage of poetic license) and said no one had gone fast enough to get a cup from him.

The racers then pursued him to his yacht, shouting epithets and inquiries, and Bixio went along, suggesting that the poet explain himself in a bit of newsreel prose. It was then that the author of "Tho Triumph of Death" and other works broke the camera's lens.

Italians have decided opinions concerning themselves as objects of photography. • Tho late Enrico Caruso once broke hie cane over the camera of Jim Buchanan, an Atlanta newsreel man. Buchanan had arranged with Lucrezia Bori to distract the great singer's attention while the newsreel crew ground av7ay from an ambush behind a taxieab. Tho cab suddenly departed, leaving tho camera crew crouched behind nothing.

It was then that Caruso really became distracted and set upon them with all the fury of Rigoletto, making them skip with his walking stick. Tho film showing tho cane hurtling directly into the eye of the camera is one of tho prized shots in tho newsreel library.

Olemenceau, travelling across the Continent, attacked Cameraman Henry DeSiena and hacked at the picture box with his cane. Ho then ordered DeSiena off tho train, which he had no right to do, sinco tho newsreel man had bought a ticket and the Tiger of Franco had not. Waited at Next Stop. DeSiena got off rather than make a scene, took a fast car to the next stop, and had his camera poised for the outburst that camo when Clomenceau saw him.

Ho was the first newsreel man to photograph Calvin Coolidge as President. They had breakfast together and a friendship started that assured DeSiena good Coolidge pictures throughout the administration.

DoSiona seems to have spent much of his life on trains. He was aboard the Royal Rumanian. On that assignment the problem was how not to photograph Her Royal nighness.

Tho French police ordered all cameramen to keep away when Alfonso, fled across tho border. When the train crossed the border, two French gendarmes were astounded to discover themselves rudely shoved aside by one Andre Glatti, who dashed forward with a newsreel camera. They knew this Glatti all too well. He represented an American newsreel. Such insolence!

They fell upon him with loud cries. M. Glatti began to reply in kind, ne struggled and argued. The frontier station shook with the vehemence of the dispute as M. Glatti was marched away to gaol.

A week later the prefect of police gnawed his beard when it was discovered that Alfonso in all his gloomy misery was starting morosely from the newsreeL M. Glatti had dashed in and made the uproar, leaving the road open for his assistant to take the photographs. Outwitting M. Glatti. M. Glatti is a yly one. The police always Ave re putting him in gaol, but he was always getting his pictures. lie had worked this trick on a Paris visit on the Prince of Wales.

When Leon. Trotsky began his (lash across France to keep a lecture' appointment, the prelect decided to bo just as sly. He put Glatti in gaol on a technical charge'before the event.

M. Glatti has been in most of the gaols of La Belle France. He doesn't worry. Ho is well paid for it. The Prince of Wales, like most celebrities, sometimes becomes impatient at the inconvenience of being a public figure, but he usually is considerate to cameramen. All of them like him, although they will pull a trick on the Royal Eddie as quickly as they will on anyone else. When he visited the United States, and was rushed politely through the Customs from Canada, he unwittingly smuggled in a case of Scotch for a slick newsman. He was vastly amused when he heard of this "international incident." On his South American tour the Prince sometimes played golf with the film men assigned to him, and often climber upon the Press stands with them to shoot amateur movies with his 16 millimeter camera. A Few Formalities. The lesser royalty is more formal. When Cameraman Hawkins and Soundman Jenock went to Bangkok to film celebrations in honour of the founding of the Siamese royal dynasty, they were required to wear "soup and fish" and high silk hats as they lugged their equipment beneath a sun that registered 114 degrees in the shade.

Haile Selassie 1., of Abyssinia, is the only monarch who has solved the cameraman problem. Lions wander around the throne room of his palace, and they are tame lions only so long as Haile and a few court dignitaries tell them to be.

Ed Hawkins, who photographed the coronation, says he always made sure the monarch really desired to have Ilia picture taken before he started cranking. Hawkins had to penetrate Abyssinia by camel and ox cart Instead of by 'plane because of the curious drinking, habits of the Mohammedans among "the Ethiopians. * The Koran forbids the drinking of alcohol among the Moslem subjects of Haile Selassie, so these get their jags by fueling up on gasolene. Fuel depots for 'planes must 'be guarded by Abyssinian troops, and it's a good idea to make sure that the troops are teetotalers.

(To be continued.)