ROMANTIC CAREER

Press, Volume LXXV, Issue 22656, 10 March 1939, Page 5

ROMANTIC CAREER

Spectacular Story Told in “Suez”

The women of France built the Suez Canal. So said a cynical English jourreviewing the great work of Ferdinand de Lesseps. And actually there was some truth in the strange assertion, for there was a glamour and aura of romance about de Lesseps that appealed irresistibly to housewife and noble lady alike, causing them to pour their money into subscriptions for shares to the Canal Company, thus making the great waterway possible. That glamour and romance still cling to the figure of de Lesseps, making him the ideal subject for screen biography, a man of real accomplishment and universal magnetism at once. Small wonder the scenarists of “Suez,” now at the State, beginning its third week, got more and more excited about their assignment as they found out mere and more about their ' central character.

lot. This was the simoon sequence in which a gale of 75 miles, an hour intensity whipped across a 20-acre desert, bowling actors over, cutting them with flying sand, choking them and battering them for 10 successive days. In addition" to this the wind storm blew over three huge water-towers and stampeded a herd of camels, horses, and donkeys, and scattered sand over an area three miles square.

Lynn Bari gets the lead opposite Warner Baxter in “The Return of the Cisco Kid.”

Dolores Costello, as leading lady of “King of the Turf,” has been playing in scenes in which her father, Maurice Costello is an extra. In her first picture he was the star and Dolores an extra.

.md small wonder also that the producers of "Suez,” 20th Century-Fox s-udio should have been lavish with time, rno-' and effort in creating a s-cctaL. it would do Justice to de Ltssef ‘;man, and de Lesseps the canal'; j alike. For his career was iu 1 of j-Jy the stuff that films are made of—romance, action, and stirring tpcctacle. .uie films did everything in their power to do justice to these elements in de Lesseps’ life. Selecting a cast of 2V featured playe-S including Tyrone Power as de Lesseps, Loretta Young as Empress Eugenie, Annabella, Henry Slephenson, Joseph Schildkraut. Sidney E.ackmCr, Maurice Mdscovitch, and Nigel Bruce, 20th Century-Fox also turned to and employed more than 3COO extras.•'Not only that, but they actually turned to and dug a canal —a great trench half a mile long, 150 feet wide and 100 feet deep—in the Arizona desert near Yuma.

The greatest spectacle of all, however, was filmed right on the home