High-powered Film Executive Recalls Fictional Models

Otago Daily Times, Issue 27295, 23 January 1950, Page 4

High-powered Film Executive Recalls Fictional Models

Special to the Daily Times WELLINGTON, Jan. 21. High-powered film executive Emanuel Silverstone, vice-president of Twentieth Century-Fox International, is in Wellington talking just like a high-powered film executive. On critics: “They’re of higher intelligence. They read a lot of books.” Of Tyrone Power’s filming programme: “We have to space the schedule so he’s in one place at one time.”

Of the shooting in Australia of a film of Australian life about 1900 possibly starring Power, and tentatively titled “Bushranger”: “We sent forerunners to Australia to see whether there was the type of scenery required in the book.” Mr Silverstone topped off his. true-to-life representation of a traditional film executive by, in the middle of a press conference, receiving a longdistance telephone call from Sydney. As any filmgoer could have predicted, the call reception was poor. He had to shout loudly. , _ . Mr Silverstone is a great admirer of the action picture. It might not convey any marked social message, but it makes money just about all °y® r the world. Having just completed the better part of a world tour, concentrating on the East, he says of Bombay, Calcutta, Rangoon, Bangkok Jakarta, Tokio, he says with authority: They like the action picture best.” To the implication that not all American pictures might be geared to the highest intellects in the land, Mr Silverstone points out that films are angled for certain groups of customers. Some take in the woman’s angle, some the man’s. Occasional films, like The Best Years of Our Lives, manage to appeal to everyone. It all starts with the book, he explains, “ Take Jane Eyre or any one of the latest novels . .. • The studio can only mould its finished film as the book allows. He does not appear in the least contrite that sometimes some of the critics look down their nose at the woman’s angle, or any other an £p?British films dd not go down well m the United States because of their slowness. “A man goes out the door and they show him every step of the way.” This, he concedes, achieves its purpose of suspense, a success not so desirable as keeping the box office bU He flies back to America next week, having achieved the declared purpose of his global trip: “To find out what our pepole are like, so when I am back in New York I’ll be understand what they’re saying.”