“The Hound Of The Baskervilles"

Northern Advocate, 16 December 1939, Page 14

“The Hound Of The Baskervilles"

They reconstructed the Chicago of lb a xor "In Old Kentucky.” They bunt pre-civil war Kentucky for "Kentucky.” They made a replica of a Missouri town of the ’7o’s for “Jesse james.'' They brought London of the ybs tp Hollywood for “The Little Princess.”

tsut reproducing Dartmoor, a great expanse of desolate rock and fen in Devonshire, England, on a motion picture set was the toughest assignment mat ever confronted me 20th CenturyFox studio experts. The moor was reconstructed for scenes in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle s “The Hound of the BaskerviUes,” in which Richard Greene, Basil Rathbone. Wendy Barrie appear, and the 30D taxed the ingenuity 01 a nandozen departments of the studio. For they literally left no stone unturned. The last jutting rock, the stunted trees, the gorse and heather, the treacherous oog at its centre and the heavy fog which usually enshrouds it —every detail was duplicated. Production chief Darryl F.‘ Zanuck, assigned the job of making an English moor spring up on a bare outdoor stage, 300 feet long and 200 feet across, to Robert Day, the studio’s art director, and Hans Refers, one. of his chief assistants. It took seven months to com-' plete it.

Their first task was to determine the exact shape and contour of the original Dartmoor, the formation of the rocks and the soil and the kind of vegetation that it supported. To do that they sent three experts to Devonshire to map the moor in detail and gather all tne other data required. Then they assigned the research department to do an intensive job of determining the changes that had taken place in the moor since the period around the turn of the century in which the story is laid. Then, on the reports obtained from the experts abroad, studio technicians built two models of the moor to exact scale. One presented Dartmoor in a birds-eye view. The other was constructed in 'sections so that each segment of the huge construction could be built separately.