FILM OF VICTORIA.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVIII, Issue 150, 26 June 1937, Page 29 (Supplement)

FILM OF VICTORIA.

AUTHENTIC SETTINGS. PAGEANTRY AND COMEDY. I ERRORS AT HER COROXATIOX. J (By JO AX LITTLEFIELD.) Imagine being an invisible spectator in a drawing room at Buckingham Palace—a stately green room, with a luscious Turkey carpet, and windows giving on to the famous balcony and a view, not of the Victoria Memorial but of the Marble Arch, crowned with the Royal Standard faintly rippling in the breeze.

Its only occupants are a fair-haired, blue-eyed lady in a crinolined gowu of creamy lace, with a black lace shawl drawn about her shoulders and a most alluring bonnet, tied with pale blue ribbons; and a spare old man with white hair and side whiskers. He announces Their Royal Highnesses Prince Ernest and Prince Albert, and the dainty lady bids her Prime Minister, Lord Melbourne, bring in the Princes whom she must inspect with a view to making one of them her Consort.

There follows a charming scene when the young Victoria discourses with the shy and stilted young men, addressing most of her remarks to Ernest, while secretly eyeing Albert, finding that she

likes him, and thinking of a ruse to get rid of Ernest and Lord Melbourne. Anna Neagle, who has the greatest part in her film career as Queen Victoria, declared that practically all the dialogue in the film is authentic. "Miles Malleson, who has done the script," she said, "could find no better dialogue than has come down to us as the real thing." Miss Neajrle went to Switzerland for a month before the film began and took with her a trunk full of books about Queen Victoria, including the Queen's journal and letters. "Victoria was a merry girl," said Miss Neagle, "and there will be lots of fun in the picture. She had a pet spaniel called Dash. When she got back to the Palace after the Coronation Lord Melbourne remarked. 'Well, madam, this is an important day for England—Thursday!' 'Thursday?' cried the Queen. 'Good gracious, it's Dash's bath night.' Whereupon, still wearing her coronation robes, she put onan apron and bathed the dog herself. "Another incident that will be shown in the film is that the rin<r was put on the Queen's wrong finger during the Coronation ceremony. The Archbishop of Canterbury thereupon became so flustered that he tried to give the Queen her sceptre when she had it already. Victoria, amazed at these mistakes, but keeping her self-possession, whispered to Lord Melbourne, "Tell them what to do; they obviously don't know." Last Portion in Technicolour. "Victoria the Great" tells an intimate story of the Queen's life up to the death of the Prince Consort, and thereafter a pageant of the final events of the reign will be -riven in technicolour. The Queen's efforts to understand the political purposes behind the advice of her Ministers is shown and also her interest in improving the social conditions of the day. There are 58 characters in the story, many of them chosen for their likeness to the people they are impersonating. Anton Walbrook is the Prince Consort and H. B. Warner Lord Melbourne.

Much official interest is being taken in the picture and the companv has been given wonderful facilities for reconstructing the interiors of the Royal palaces. Great research has been necessary to reproduce buildings and apartments as they were 100 years ago. L. P. Williams, the art director, says that contemporary paintings of Westminster Abbey at the time of Victoria's Corona tion contradict each other and that he got more help from a sifk handkerchief with a nictnre of the Abbey worked on it. which was lent him bv a studio electrician, whose family had kept it for 100 years.

Doris Zinkeisen designed the 40 dresses that Mir* Xeagle will wear in the picture. All of them are authentic down to the last detail, having been copied from dresses in the London Museum, from contemporary paintings and from notes in the Queen's own journals, Her Majesty, with the appreciative eye of a woman, having noted many details of her dresses and of those worn at her Court.

The film was to have been released in England on June 21, the hundredth anniversary of VictoriaV- accession, on which date King Edward VIII.'s action in raising the previous theatrical ban was to have become effective.