FILM TOPICS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXI, Issue 21396, 20 October 1934, Page 12 (Supplement)

FILM TOPICS

" Green Stockings " is being rewritten for Barabara Stanwyck. l)orothey Mackaill appeared in the original version. The first full-length feature picture to try out the new technicolour process will be "The Three Musketeers," with Francis Lederer. " The Glass Key," an early crime novel by Dashiell Hammett, author of "The Thin Man," is to be produced by Paramount. George Raft will probably play the lead. Fox are hoping to make a talking version of D. W. Griffith's famous silent success, "Way Down p]ast." If they are able to buy the rights, Janet Gaynor will play Lillian Gish's original role. Clarence Brown (who is at present holidaying in England) will be paid £15,000 for each of the two pictures he directs for M.G.M. during 1935., His first will be "Ah Wilderness," with Will Rogers. New York ciyema audiences have formed the habit of hissing whenever the censorship '.'purity seal" precedes a picture. They complain that the presence of the seal denotes that the film has been seriously altered. Mr. Alexander Korda has bought the film rights of " Joseph and His Brethren," by Thomas Mann, one of Germany's outstanding novelists. Mr. Korda says he will probably cast Mr. Fredric March or Mr. Leslie Howard for Joseph, and give Mr. King Vidor, the Hollywood director, now on the Continent, the task of directing. Who will play Potiphar's wife, one of the famous "vamps" of history, is not yet decided.

Sorgei Eisenstein, che famous Russian director, has started work on a film dealing with thp "Chelyuskin" expedition. The sum set aside by Darryl Zanuck for the ten pictures which he will supervise for Twentieth Century during the forthcoming year is £1,300,000. M.G Rl. are reshooting scenes tor Chevalier's picture, " The Merry Widow," having failed to get them safely past the censorial eye of the Hays organisation. Two statues have been made of sach of the principal players in "The Night Life of the Gods." One statue shows them as they are—the other shows them as they might look if "deified." Oxford, as sees it, will form the background of " Manners Maketh the Man," for which M.G.M. are sending a production unit to England. The story, which deals with the adventures of a young American at the university, was written by John Monk Saunders, and the English scenarist, John Paddy Carstairs, has been working on the script. In spite of the arduous ten or twelve hours of daily effort by motion picture companies, three minutes of completed film is the top average of daily production. This fact was revealed by Wesley Ruggles, who directed Paramount's "Thank Your Stars," featuring Jack Oakie, Dorothy Dell and Ben Bernie and his band. "We take between 2500 and 3500 feet of film a day," says Ruggles, "or the equivalent of about half an hour of running film, but in the end this footage is reduced to about three minutes of accepted scenes."