ACTORS LOSE THEIR HEADS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 15857, 1 September 1913, Page 5

ACTORS LOSE THEIR HEADS

REALISTIC BATTLE SCENE. ' SEVERAL PEOPLE WOUNDED. (Times, Sydney Sun Special Cables.) Pr««» Association—By Telegraph-Copyright. LONDON, August 29. Five thousand persons were employed in acting "Ivanhoe" near Chepstow Castle for a kinematograph film. During the battle scene many of those engaged lost their heads'and fought in earnest. There were a number of casualties..' A London newspaper man eat on the battlements of Chepstow Castle recently and watched Ivanhoe and Robin Hood storm tlio stronghold and dare the swords and maces of Reginald Front do Boeuf and Brian dc Bois Guilbcrt. When the mail-clad men-at-arms and tho bowmen in Lincoln Green had fought their way through tho gate and gained the courtyard, a perspiring gentleman, armed with a megaphone, ordered them back again, and asked in bitter'tones if tho corpses would be good enough to lie still on the next occasion. ,An historic drama was being "staged'-' for a firm of film manufacturers, and a picture had been spoiled because some bare-legged attackers, stricken by arrows from the ramparts above, had rolled down into a bed of stinging nettles at the edge of the moat. But the sccno was realistic enough, and the old castlo rang to such sounds as had not cclioed within its walls for several centuries.