English Derby Filmed in Technicolour

Manawatu Times, Volume 63, Issue 81, 6 April 1938, Page 11

English Derby Filmed in Technicolour

CULMINATING SCENE OF “WINGS OF THE MORNING” (State: Now Screening.) 1 When a horse-racing scene was required for “Wings of the Morning," the Twentieth Century-Fox release in natural Technicolour, starring Annabella, Henry Fonda and Leslie Banks, and presenting the world-famous tenor, John McCormack, nothing less than the English Derby would do. All of which involved the technical staff for the film in as fine a maze of technical detail as you could ask.

The Derby, most publicized race in the world, offered a somewhat different proposition from a studio-made race. The shots had to be perfect at the first take, for no director could say, “Let’s try that again please," to the 1 racehorses, the crowds or the weather. -The first thing to do was to obtain the cooperation of the newsreel companies, who had all the shooting locations reserved. Colin Lesslie, technical adviser on the sequence, got a plan of the course, had it photographed, and marked it plainly with shooting positions. Next, a full detail of each race on eacli of the four days of the meeting was prepared, for the long shots could be used to secure material that would later be cut into the film of the Derby itself. Therefore, it was necessary to have full information as to the starting point, the distance, and the type of horse entered in each race.

Atmosphere shots of the gypsies, fair grounds, bookies, racing touts and so on were taken during the early, less-crowd-ed days of the meeting. On the day of the Derby, the horses were photographed as they paraded from the paddock to the end of the grand stands, galloped back to the paddock, and paraded straight over the downs to the start. After every day of the meeting had been covered with machinelike precision and thoVoughness, and every detail had been triple-checked, matters were left in the hands of the weather man. He had been uniformly unkind throughout the filming of the earlier portions of the story, but he smiled on the Derby and thus on the technicolour film.

Harold Schuster directed the film, which is based on stories by Donn Byrne. Robert T. Kane w r as the producer.