A DOG’S CHANCE

Southland Times, Issue 23922, 14 September 1939, Page 14

A DOG’S CHANCE

IMPROMPTU ROLE IN BRITISH FILM Chum, film director Walter Forde’s four-year-old wirehaired terrier, has at last become a screen actor himself. Chum will be seen in the new A.T.P. film, “Cheer Boys, Cheer,” which his master is directing and which Michael Balcon is producing at the Ealing Studios. His part in the film is the reward for four years’ patient waiting at the back of the camera, for Chum has been Walter Forde’s inseparable companion on the set ever since the popular director first acquired him. ' There have been many “dog actors” before Chum, so that his entry into histrionics may, not, you may therefore claim, merit any undue attention. But Chum has made his entry into films newsworthy by being the first dog to write his own part in the script. It happened this way. There is a scene in “Cheer Boys, Cheer,” in which there is a collision between two cars. Five principals of the film are in this scene—Nova Pilbeam, Jimmy O’Dea, Edmund Gwenn, and that grand comedy team, Moore Marriott and Graham Moffatt. The collision causes considerable commotion among them, and it was this commotion which Chum found irresistible. Before Walter Forde could restrain the dog he rushed barking into the fray and proceeded to bury his teeth enthusiastically into the ample flesh of Graham Moffatt, causing the stout, lad to protest in no ' uncertain terms. Chum’s entry, it was found when they screened the “rushes” in the next morning, lent great vigour to the scene, and it was decided to keep him in the film.

“Cheer Boys, Cheer,” tells of the struggles of a small independent brewery to resist being absorbed by a huge combine. The two young Scotsmen responsible for the writing of “This Man Is News”—Roger MacDougall and Allan MacKinnon—wrote the script from an original story by yet another Scotsman, lan Dalrymple.