PEEPING AT FILMDOM.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVI, Issue 307, 28 December 1935, Page 5 (Supplement)

PEEPING AT FILMDOM.

KRUGER TRICKS THE ZULUS.

ANNA STEN EXPERT DANCER,

(By JOAN LITTLEFIELD.)

LONDON, November 20.

Interesting facts about President Kruger have been brought to light through the energies of the GaumontBritish research department. Kruger, impersonated by the well-known Austrian actor, Oscar Homolka, will be an important figure in the screen film of the life of Cecil Rhodes, in which Walter Huston plays the name part. In the film Kruger appears as a man of small stature "with long ape-like arms," an impish sense of humour and a very quiet voice.

Doreen Simpson, chief of the research department, visited Holland to discover from Kruger's grandchildren the essential facts of his life, and she learned many of his idiosyncrasies as well. Kruger would astonish natives by telling them of the great power of his' lungs; then he would blow mightily at an electric light bulb 20 feet away, while he stealthily extinguished it from a switch behind him. On every occasion he wore a top hat and would sit on the stoep of his house in it, drinking coffee • and holding important conferences between 6 and 8 o'clock in the morning. For this coffee he received an allowance of £600 a year from the Government. It was drunk from special cups bearing the arms of the Transvaal Government. These cups, now in the possession of the grandchildren, have been reproduced for the film.

Kruger was careless about his dress and was fond of explaining that he was a farmer and his father a cowherd. He was vain of his shooting ability and was also superstitious.

Anna Stcn, the Russian film star, is not only a fine screen artist, but also an accomplished dancer, particularly in dances of her native country. This was revealed to a remarkable degree the other day, when a scene from "A Woman Alone," the film which she is at present making at Elstree, called for a grand celebration dance after an aristocrat's wedding.

In a beautiful woodland setting the Leon Woizokovsky ballet were porferming one of their Russian dances, and Miss Stcn, as "principal ballerina," went deftly through all the intricate steps of an excitable Russian folk dance.

The picturesque life of Czarist Russia is being recaptured in this film. A row of log cabins with gardens, lining a village lane, has been erected in the studios. The cottages are all typical of the country and period, with roughhewn furniture, earthenware pitchers, gaily-coloured curtains and quaint ikons.

Cary Grant, the Hollywood star, has been signed by Garrett Element Pictures to play the leading role in "The Amazing Quest of Mr. Ernest Bliss," an adaptation of the Phillips Oppenheim story of the same name Cary Grant was born in Bristol. He left home when he was 15, and after joining a troupe of acrobats, played in numerous stage plays and film productions. The most important are "I'm No Angel," with Mae West; "Blonde Venus," with Marlene Dietrich; "Alice in Wonderland," "Born to be Bad," and "Wings in the Dark."

"The Amazing Quest," his first British film, will be directed and produced by Alfred Zeisler, who until recently was deputy-chief of production at the Ufa studios in Berlin. John L. Balderston, the scenario writer responsible for "The Lives . of a Bengal Lancer," "Peter Ibbeteon;" and other films, lias been signed to adapt the novel to film form.

American films, heretofore dominant in Japan, have yielded top popularity to European competitors in the past year, according to Viscount Tsunshiro Kutsuki, counsellor to Nippon's cinema industry, and a director of the Tokyo Takaradzuka Chair Theatre Company. The viscount arrived in London aboard the liner Asama Maru on his world swing of cinema centres to determine saleability in Nippon. His intention was to spend several days in Hollywood inspecting the ecreenland situation and its latest trends. Love stories alone' are not sufficiently satisfying to the Japanese, particularly educated Japanese, he said, who like their romance associated with social and economic phases, and therein lies popularity of the European films. The Takaradzuka Company, he explained, has a large number of theatres, including 15 new ones, seating from 2000 to 4000 patrons each.

The L.M.S. Railway, pioneers in the production of films for staff educational purposes, have arranged for their film unit to visit 40 centres in England, Wales and Scotland during the winter. This yenr, for the first time, the films will be in sound. They are "Number 0207" (a study in steel), which records the building of one of the latest type of locomotives at the Crewe works of the L.M.S., and "Permanent Way," a story of the 19.000 miles of the L.M.S. Railway. "The exhibition of these films," states Sir Josiah Stamp, president of the L.M.S., "has been embarked upon to provide an opportunity for the staff to become better acquainted with the activities of such a huge organisation."