UNUSUAL COMPLAINT

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXXII, 26 November 1938, Page 6

UNUSUAL COMPLAINT

Most film producers, when setting out to film exterior scenes complain of England’s bad weather conditions. The appearance of a film unit with cameras has hitherto been the signal for the disappearance of the sun and a deluge of rain, but Captain Norman Walker, during his filming of “Our Fighting Navy,” had a complaint of a different nature to make —the weather was too good. Many of the scenes for this magnificent sea drama were filmed at Weymouth, where the battleship H.M.S. Royal Oak and the cruiser H.M.S. Curacoa played important roles as a rebel battleship, the El Mirante and H.M.S. Audacious, the British cruiser captained by Robert Douglas. Midshipmen and sailors revelled in the business of dressing up as insurgents. They laid smoke screens, fired guns and torpedoes, faked shell hits, and even went so far as to panic up and down the decks and fling themselves into the sea when the rebel ship was “sunk.”

But the sun still shone and the sea remained calm —not a single wave ruffled the glassy surface. Despite the absence of the choppy seas desired by Norman Walker for film effects these scenes ot battle between a cruiser and a battleship are the most magnificent ever screened One person was very relieved that the weather had decided to behave itself—that was Hazel Terry. For one sc_ne in the film she has to dive head first into the ocean from the deck of a battleship—a pastime better indulged in, in calm waters.