Hollywood Spending Again: £50,000 For Finale

Auckland Star, Volume LXVIII, Issue 270, 13 November 1937, Page 7 (Supplement)

Hollywood Spending Again: £50,000 For Finale

By Harold Heffernan

£!J!f Pa " per ' * nd alao th « cathedral JmiUUon for "The Prisoner of Zenda." ilie latter features a real stained-glass window and antique candelabra shipped

Shipwrecks for the screen always cost a lot of money. It i* usually too dangerous to stage these on the high seas, « '» a ?,if* Ppened recen "y >n "Souls At HAPDV J , ff*' S J»;« Ship" and "'Ebbtide/' the days are here again in < " B * Bter *» kes pl*ee in a converted sound Hollywood. •' • "u* ge - For " Ebb «de." the replica of a noiiywood. Pictures are going "hip was built in a big tank-i2sft long, over in a big way, the slump is an I } w,de —°n the Paramount lot. A echo of the oast and .~» hydraulic lift rocked the boat up and ecno or me past and rno,e money down as though it were foundering, than ever has been sunk in better and F , ort y feet above one end of the tank, larger studio sets. It is estimated that «« ents „ of five tanks ' each «>ntain- ., i««» s nnn nm\ -L.it ng J SOO ga,,onß of water > v°»™a down at least 5,000.000 dollars will be spent » into the water and over the this year for special effect* and Bhip - B ? the tim * the shipwreck was sequences. performed to the satisfaction of _ - , , _ . Director James Hogan, "Ebbtide" was in The finale of -Broadway Melody of the mill ion-dollar category 19.18, •tarring Robert Taylor and Producer Walter Wanger thinks Eleanor Powell, added 200,000 dollars to nothing of bringing the mountains to

"Love in a Bungalow" is the title of the film, and with a divan like that in a bungalow like that one would he surprised if Love did not become a tenant. Nan Crej. tilled by her enthusiastic studio as One Smart Cirl, and Kent Taylor are the stars.

its cost. First of an, there U a nine-ton class curtain which moved Jowly to the stage to form steps lor dance numbers. The actual let represents Broadway in New York, and has fifty modernistic buildings that gradually "grow up to a Viirht of 80ft. Each one is controlled J>y an elevator motor.. The trafficminiature cars, buses, etc.-i» all made to ecale, all electrically controlled. The curtain is 100 ft wide and 120 ft high. JOleanor PowelC »» »»«* l ' *««w«* /aer taps over a tank filled with water. The fashion show in Walter Wanger*a •'Vogues of 1938," cost 85,000 dollars before a single scene waa '''hot, with a daily operating expense of 25,000 dollar*. The set was half a block long, 100 ft high, required 80,000 ft of lumber, two carloads of fabricated steel, four ions of glass, 20,000 square yards of flraperiea, and 15,000 square feet of £arpet. The Wg scene In 'The life of Emile fcola"—the interior of the Pantheon, •where Anatole France delivers the ifuncral oration for Zola (Paul Mum), ndded 75,000 dollars to the Warner Brothers cost sheet. The climax of "Submarine D-l" is • Collision between a cruiser and a submarine. Before it can dive to safety the submarine is rammed. The inmates, however, are screen actors and must be rescued. And so a miniature boat, an exact duplicate, equipped with torf>«does, and operated in the water by electrical remote control, was built with povcrnment approval. The collision destroys a 20,000-dollar toy.

Votive Village

/n Hurricane

Sam Goldwyn spent 150,000 to build a ißative village in hurricane, and » ln »°« t twice that to blow it to pieces. Enlisting the aid of California's Institute of JTechnology, Sam created wind ▼e locl *y jftf 200 miles an hour with eight machines, each powered by a 12-cylinder motor. Walls were pulled down with tractors. Water poured down four ehutea in*o a tank 150 ft square. Leading man Jon Hall—or bis double—was knocked down eight times by 2000 gallons of water. Mary Astor, or her double, took * worse beating from |2,000 gallons. The Adam and Ere Inn at Calais to •The Great Garrkk'* swallowed 75,000 dollars. The interiors of the Drury Lane Theatre and the Comedie Francaise for the same picture required 50,000 dollars •nd 40,000 dollars, respectively.

Extravagant producer! adore nlnw with Coronation scenes. The leaat that ean foe spent is around 100,000 dollars, which was the price for the reproduction ff Westminster Abbey in "The Prince

Mahomet—or to his productions. For "I Met My Love Again," a slice of the Vermont Green Mountains was built inside a sound stage so that Joan Bennett and Henry Fonda could make love in a terrific storm, with rain, thunder and lightning, controlled, of course, for photographic and sound recording purposes.

A Tiddley at the Milk Bar is trhat the doctor ordered for Lana Turner (left) and Linda Perry, murder victim and witness respectively in the melodrama, "They Won't Forget."

The largest sum of money dumped into a current picture for one scene was the fire in Darryl Zanuck's "In Old Chicago." A total of 500,000 dollars was spent to make and devastate four acres of Twentieth Century-Fox property, representing the City of Chicago in miniature. Wall* were lined with sheet steel to withstand heat. The kerosene consumption averaged 350 gallons daily. Two different chemicals, both very expensive, were used for smoke effects. The plan was such a success that, during the rehearsal, a building on the next corner, that had nothing to do with the film, caught fire.—(Copyright — X.A.N.A.)

Leopold Slokowski, conductor of the famous Philadelphia Symphony Orchestra, stars with fourteen-year-old Dearma Durbin in the new romantic musical film, "100 Men and a CirC — Deatma's first film since her debut m "Three Smart Girls." Siokowski made a brief appearance on the screen in one of the "Big Broadcast" series. He is in the news just now through his rumoured romance with Carbo.