CONTROLS £24,000,000

Greymouth Evening Star, 14 November 1936, Page 7

CONTROLS £24,000,000

BRITAIN’S FILM KING. LONDON, October 17. Twenty-four years ago Mr. John Maxwell was a solicitor with a steady family clientele in Glasgow. To-day he is the British film chief who put through the £24,000,000 film deal that prevents the Gaumont-British Picture Corporation passing-/ into foreign control. Yet he still conducts his solicitor’s business in Glasgow. The man who saved a vast company for Britain still visits Glasgow once a week, and. forgetting films, devotes his time to his original business, now a flourishing and much larger concern. John Maxwell’s story has a romance of its own, although it is a record of unromantic commonsense and business perception. He had a good practice as a solicitor in 1912, when lie first entered the cinema business by buying a small Glasgow pic-ture-house. The solicitor turned cinema manager did his job so well that the pic-ture-house prospered. He formed a company and bought several other cinemas, in 1919 he entered the business and production side of motion pictures by forming the Waverly Film Company,' which distributed pictures throughout Scotland, and soon became the leading distributing concern north of the Tyne. Mr. Maxwell’s next venture was Wardour Films, which he ran successfully for several years. Then John Maxwell had an idea. Ho foresaw Elstreo as the Hollywood of Britain. Within a few weeks he raised enough money to form British International Pictures. He planned studios bigger and better equipped than this country .had ever : known.;-..