OVER THE HILL

Otago Daily Times, Issue 27038, 24 March 1949, Page 2

OVER THE HILL

It was unlikely that Mr J. Arthur Rank, mogul of the British film industry, intended that his remark, “ I am sure that we have got over the hill,” given in a recent interview, should be interpreted as a major step towards the poorhouse which customarily completes the phrase. Despite the current reports of a crisis in the film industry in Britain, Mr Rank considered that the next 12 months should consolidate the British position. “We have got over the experimental stage, and have won the battle for a substantial share of the world’s screen from the American monopoly,” he said. “ I expect to make 42 films this year, many of them by the new independent frame process, which saves time and money,” he said. “ The public will not notice any difference. They will not look like cheap pictures, but they will not cost more than roughly £150,000. I take no risk with films at that price. The risk was in the eight big films we made on the lines of ‘ Hamlet ’ and ' The Red Shoes.’ I might have lost a great deal on those. Frankly, I was worried. As it happened, we shall get the money back. But I am not going to have that headache any more. We shall go on making that style of film, as well as the medium kind, but they will be cheaper.” Mr Rank denies that the industry is extravagant, as its critics assert. “ I believe in paying big salaries to people who can bring big money to the box office,” he said. “ But I think it might be possible to work out a profit-sharing system for these people.” Asked why he was sacking about 600 studio employees and why he refused to add to the £12,000,000 which he has tied up in films already made, Mr Rank said: " I have been extravagant in the numbers of men I have employed. I have put off dismissing them as long as I can. But my plans for streamlining production to fit into the possible takings in this country will not require so many men. “ The crisis is mostly with the independents, who cannot offset a possible loss on one picture with the profits on another, as I can,” said Mr Rank. “ They would be all right if the Government did not take £200,000 in entertainment tax out of the £600,000 which is the most their kind of film can hope to get at the box office. The Treasury must do something about that. I have managed to stand the tax, but I should be able to put something to reserve if some of it were given back.”

Now that his puppet and live-action ‘’Alice in Wonderland ” is in the last stages of preparation for release, Lou Bunin has three more “ three-dimen-sional ” puppet picture projects in various stages. The producer divulged that the first will be a fantasy based on" a Hans Christian Andersen story. “All I can say about it. right now is that it deals with good and evil,” he said. “We will use puppets and child actors.” Following this on his agenda will be a three-hour condensation of Richard Wagner’s Ring cycle, an undertaking in which Leopold Stokowski has no small part. " Stokowski,” Bunin said, “ has been working with me on the operas for about a year. We have all the puppets—we do not intend to use actors—and Stokowski will hire the singers when we. are ready to go.” The third entry is a picture “ dealing with American folklore and centring around Paul Bunyan.” « * • American actress Katherine Cornell is to make a world tour during the next three or four years, according to the New York Sun’s theatre writer. Ward Morehouse. Her present plans are for appearances in South Africa, New Zealand and Australia in a repertoire of two or three plays.

Cicely Courtneidge has started rehearsals for her new show, “ Her Excellency,” which opens in Glasgow m April. “ Her Excellency ” has been written by Jack Hulbert in collaboration with the Australian playwright, Archie Menzies, and it will star Thorley Waters in a specially-written role. Asked if Her Excellency ’’ would go abroad on tour, Miss Courtneidge said: ‘‘Wait till after the London premiere. Then we may consider another trip abroad.”

Lex Barker’s first essay at filling the leopard skin of Johnny Weissmuller is now on film in Sol Lesser’s “ Tarzan and the Magic Fountain.” Mr Barker does express a mild fear that his intellect is insufficiently pithecoid to permit him to become perfectly integrated in his new job. He tried to introduce an innovation or two in the reading of his lines, such as substituting personal pronouns tor ” Tarzan ” and “ Jane ” when he spoke ol himself and to his mate, but he was checked sternly. No one would listen to his argument that Tarzan is really Lord Grevstoke, an educated Englishman, according to the Edgar Rice Burroughs tradition. All he managed to do, he says, was sneak in an occasional connecting word like “ the ” or “ and when the director was not listening closely, but his speeches are, still strictly sub-human. A press release from Leonard Levinson, president of Impossible Pictures, which produces cartoon films for Re-, public, announced that, in view of the suspension of production at other studios, he had decided to suspend his animators. “ Thus,” the release said, “Impossible is the only company with suspended animation.” * * * Hollywood, currently suffering the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, nas taken oblique but obvious pride in a report received from the Magistrates Association of Great Britain. The magisterial body,- a group of 6693 jurists, was asked by the Home Office to study children and the cinerria and arrived at a general conclusion that pictures were not guilty of contributing towards juvenile delinquency. Among the other features of the report were:— , ... . “ When the cinema is blamed for a child going wrong, it will generally be found that such a child is one who would go wrong in any case “ anti-social conduct arises from deeper causes than the mutation of things done on the screen ; ” there is no evidence from any otner country that there is a relationship between the cinema and juvenile delinquency ” the cinema keeps boys out ot mischief, men out of public houses and girls from the streets“ the young are not more wicked than they were, but, cinemas are a convenient scapegoat, like the penny dreadful in its day “ investigations have never found any correlation between delinquency and attending the cinema,” and “ emotional unhappiness is the most potent cause of juvenile delinquency. The unhappy child is most likely to seek forgetfulness in the unreal world of the cinema."