HEADING FOR STARDOM

Southland Times, Issue 23767, 15 March 1939, Page 8

HEADING FOR STARDOM

YOUNG ENGLISH ACTOR Look out for John Clements, writes John Littlefield in an Australian exchange. This young man is heading straight for stardom. If you saw Alexander Korda’s picture of the Russian revolution, “Knight Without Armour,” you will remember the vividly sincere performance of John Clements as a Red Commissar, who fell in love with Marlene Dietrich and helped her and Robert Donat to escape. When you see that interesting picture of Yorkshire life, “South Riding,” you will not forget a shaggy-haired, intense young Socialist councillor hopelessly in love. He is John Clements.

In his late twenties, Mr Clements is one of Alexander Korda’s white hopes for the future. He has the hero role of Harry Faversham in “The Four Feathers,” and is almost a certainty for the part of Lawrence of Arabia. There was a time when John Clements thought he would never have a chance to do big things unless he established a theatre of his own. He was making a fair sum of money in quota films, but had no idea of becoming a star in good pictures. On the stage his work was limited to a few odd character parts. In Palmers Green, a suburb of North London which had no theatre within miles, the actor found an empty church hall which only needed seating, carpeting and lighting to become a suitable theatre. He started there with revivals of popular West End plays. It was hard going at first. Then he put on Noel Coward’s “Private Lives,” and for the first time his organization showed a small profit. “I thought success would be easy then,” he said, “but we had a hard struggle for months longer before we finally turned the corner. Now the venture is safe. I can put on any sort of play I like and be sure of my audience. ‘Hamlet’ was one of our most popular ventures. I intend to stage two Tchehov plays soon, and early next year I hope to appear myself as Romeo and Macbeth.” When I asked Mr Clements how he was going to reconcile the business of being a film-star with that of running a theatre, he said: “My contract stipulates not more than two pictures a year. When ‘The Four Feathers’ is finished, they cannot call on me again till June, unless they should want me for ‘Lawrence of Arabia.’ I would give up anything to make that film. I have seen the script and it is absolutely first-rate.”