The Story Behind A Film

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LXIII, Issue 19098, 20 August 1936, Page 13

The Story Behind A Film

THERE may be a lot of housewives who know that the word “Pasteurised” on the milk bottle comes from the name Pasteur, but they are probably not a majority. There wore not, many people in Hollywood last year who knew much about Louis Pasteur. The few pictures of him showed him as a portly, bev.hiskered fellow with no sex appeal at all. His life seemed a prosaic, uninteresting one. It is no easy task to make a picture about a man who looked through microscopes and boiled milk and cured diseases of silk worms and sheep and prevented rabies. -So, Pasteur went unhonoured and unsung hi Hollywood.

There is a story behind the filming of the picture, “The Story of Louis Pasteur.” Up on a hill overlooking the Burbank studio lives a tall German who used to bo a Reinhardt actor. His name is William Dieterle. His hobby is looking through a microscope. Three years ago the director decided that the life of Pasteur would make a line picture. He outlined the story one night in a hotel and then put it away, because no one else seemed to share his enthusiasm. Last year Dieterle directed “Dr. Socrates,” starring Paul Muni. He told Muni about; his desire to Him Pasteur. Muni looked sit the outline and liked it. Together they convinced officials that microbe-hunt-ing was screen material, and by the end of the summer Muni was spending his days in the make-up department trying to make himself look liko Pasteur. Eventually all the difficulties were overcome and the picture made.