DRESSING CRUSADERS.

Evening Post, Volume CXX, Issue 112, 7 November 1935, Page 21

DRESSING CRUSADERS.

Dressing, film players for 'their roles is not all a matter of cutting and sewing. In the case of Cecil B. De Mille's new Paramount picture, "The Crusades," starring Henry Wilcoxon and Loretta Young, it took sheet metal workers, blacksmiths, farriers, and jewellers. It took more metal workers than cloth workers to dress one of the 1000 Crusaders used in the picture. The welldressed Crusader, star or extra, is a man of much weight. Henry Wilcoxon. who plays the leading role of King Richard the Lion-Heart, added 100 pounds of costume and gear to his own weight of 190 pounds. The twelfth century period which the film depicts was the age of chain mail, with small pieces of plate for elbows, wrists, and shoulders. The business of dressing a De Mille crusader meant employment to hundreds of people. The foundry, metal shop, and blacksmith's shop at the Paramount Studios went into high gear, swords were pounded on anvils, huge iron and steel shields were hauled from the metal shop in stacks. The chain mail shirts and head covering necessitated miles of metal to be woven. Thus the crusader had added almost 50 per cent, to his own weight. Spurs were clapped on ' his heels, a seven-foot lance placed in his hand, and a tremendous shield on his left arm. Only then was he ready to do battle for the picture.