PEEPING AT FILMDOM.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVII, Issue 21, 25 January 1936, Page 5 (Supplement)

PEEPING AT FILMDOM.

NEGRO PRODUCTION. English: studio news. (By JOAN LITTLEFIELD.) LONDON", December 17. A film called "Ordeal by Poison" has recently been shot in Rhodesia. It is acted entirely by negroes, and tells a true story that happened in 1880. The hero, Nyamapora, a Matabele warrior, is in love with Rushwa, but she is betrothed to an elderly native, Chifamba, who wins her from her father by a trick. She escapes from the wedding feast to join her lover in the forest, but they are caught and Chifamba brings a false charge against Nyamapora, and he is condemned to go through ordeal by poison. Ruslnvij, however, manages to replace the witch doctors' poison by water, and her lover is proved innocent. Eventually Nyamapora and Chifamba engage in mortal combat, the villain is killed, and Nyamapora and his bride live happily ever after. The chief actors in the film are prominent Africans. Mtshena, who plays the part of Chifamba, was a member of the Insugamini Regiment and fought against the Pioneers in 1893. Rushwa, the heroine, got married the ether day, her husband having bought her for five cows, the usual price for a pretty negro girl. Nils Cooper, producer of the film, tells of many amusing incidents during the nine months he spent in Rhodesia working on the film. "Our hero," he said, "was quite a Don Juan and extremely temperamental. When acting his love scenes, he sometimes went further than was strictly necessary, and once the real-life lover of the heroine found a letter written to her by the hero giving her 999 kisses.

This caused the film to be held up for days, and cost us hundreds of cigarettes, tobacco, snuff and rations of salt before matters were finally adjusted. "Another day the heroine refused to work because the hero's wife had threatened to file out the teeth of her baby. Other actors who caused us trouble were a 15ft snake and three baboons. _ ta "We had our more serious accidents, too. One young negro who had to fall from a high rock fell through the blankets held for him and was seriously injured. In camp one night a little negro boy fell into the camp fire and was burned to death. During the warriors' dances, too, some of the negroes got so excited that they injured others with their spears." - Alfred Louis Worker, who entered the film business 25 years ago as a property boy with Mary Pickford, and is now a first-rate director —he was responsible, among other things, for "Ihe House of Rothschild" —has come to England to direct "His Majesty's Pyjamas." It will be his first picture outside America, and its stars will be Olive Brook and Helen Vinson. The film concerns the bewildering experiences of an exiled king and a syndicate who offer, in their own interests, to re-establish him on the throne. Mr. Werker said he was persuaded to direct the film because this is the first time an English company has bought all American book for filming.

" 'His Majesty's Pyjamas' was written by Gene Markey, whom I know very well," he said. "It is American in thought and as a novel it has a big American public."

Phoenix Films, a small but intelligent company who made that excellent, though inexpensive thriller, "Death at Broadcasting House," are working on a picture, "Calling the Tune," which has as its background the past, present and future of the gramophone. It begins in the days when a band had to play a tune for every wax cylinder that was required, and ends in the future when a sort of canned television is on sale, so that by putting on a record one not only hears a performer, but sees him also. The machine on which Queen Victoria and Gladstone made records has a part in the film, and Melba's voice is heard. The director, Reginald Denham, has put the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art on the screen for the first time and also Sir Henry Wood and his orchestra. George Robey appears in the film, doing a music hall turn, and Charles Penrose, the "laughing comedian," and Sir Cedric and Lady Hardwicke are also introduced. Franz Weihmayer, who photographed "Madchen "n Uniform," is taking the picture a Adele Dixon, once of the Old .Vic. ~now a musical comedy star, and Clifford Evans play the leading parts.

Nova Pilbeam, 16-year-old GaumontBritish star who, after playing the name part in "Lady Jane Grey," is now appearing on the London stage as Peter Pan, goes in for neatness in drees. In her personal wardrobe she has a plain, high-necked dress in myrtle green angora wool. It is enlivened by having its neck, cuffs and a long front panel embroidered in pale green, scarlet and Wt» flontache braid.

They are still shooting the final scenes of the Wells' epic of the future, "Things to Come," which is to be shown simultaneously ill London and New York in January. One of its largest and most impressive sets represented a section of the City of the Future and a wonderful perspective of the city ways. In the centre of the square an autogyro of futuristic design landed with a roar, bringing Raymond Hassey, Pearl Argyle and Edward Chapman on their visit to the space gun, which was built to shoot a man and woman to the moon.

Peter Lorre, German star of "M," "The Man Who Knew Too Much," "Mad Love" and the new Hollywood version of "Crime and Punishment," is now in London playing the villain in Alfred Hitchcock's "Secret Agent." Lorre says his greatest

ambition is to prove to directors that films of creative power can be as big boxoffico draws as so-called "popular" films. He thinks that the future of good films lies in collaboration between actor and writer.

London Films have recently signed Erich Pommer, once director-general of UFA in Germany, to be production chief at tlieir new studio at Denliam. They have also signed George Robey, veteran music-hall star, who astonished London last year by making his debut in Shakespeare's "Henry 1V.," Part 1., in which he was one of the best Falstaffs ever. Mr. Robey was in the "Chu Chin Chow" film and was Sancho Panza in the English version of "Don Quixote" with Chaliapin.

London, the greatest metropolis in the world—and what, beside its effects and impressions on the commercial world, has made it so ? Tradition, and tradition only, has given London the greatness which we mean when we speak of it in such a way. Within the boundaries

of the city is to be found more real romance, history and adventure than one might say there is in all the other cities of the world put together. All this is said to have been captured in "London Speaks," the first feature-length film ever produced in London by Australian enterprise and capital. It was produced recently by Mr. Cecil Mason. The spectator will be taken to such places as the Olde Cheshire Cheese in Fleet Street, the famous old inn which was the rendezvous of so many cf England's famous literary men, the Houses of Parliament, Westminster Abbey, the Tower, Rotten Row,. Madame Tussaud's famous waxworks, and all the other world-famous landmarks.