“PASTOR HALL”

Southland Times, Issue 24153, 15 June 1940, Page 8

“PASTOR HALL”

Ernst Toiler’s Play

Filmed

LIFE STORY OF PASTOR NIEMOLLER Several Hollywood studios have played with the idea of making a film on the life story of Pastor Niemoller for the past year. A British picture, which is now in production, has stolen a good deal of Hollywood’s thunder. Last summer, Britain’s two youngest film producers, Roy Boulting and John Boulting, 26-years-old twins, bought the rights to Ernst Toiler’s play, “Pastor Hall,” inspired by the life and sufferings of Pastor Niemoller. The authorities, however, indicated that they thought it unwise to make such a film in those troubled pre-war days. Now, however, things are different, and the brothers have begun work on this bitter exposure of Nazism at their little studios in the North London suburb of Highbury, writes a London correspondent. The picture is arousing considerable interest. It will be completed in a month, and audiences here and in America will see it before Robert Montgomery begins work on “I Had a Comrade,” in which he will play the Pastor, at Denham. This latter film, I understand, is an authentic film biography of Niemoller. “Pastor Hall” deals with events in a German village, and its main figure is symbolical of any German pastor who stands up against Nazism. When I visited the studio, Wilfrid Lawson (the Pastor), a pathetic figure in an old raincoat, bare-necked and with a haunted look in his eyes, was being arrested by a smart young Storm Trooper (Marius Goring) after having escaped from a concentration camp. He was in the house of a friend (Sir Seymour Hicks), a German general of the old Monarchist school looking in his make-up rather like von Hindenburg, who came in, very angry, and forbade the arrest. Nova Pilbeam (Hall’s daughter) and her fiance, the general’s son, were also present. I learned from Mr Lawson that we shall be spared none of the horrors of a concentration camp in this film. AGAINST THE NAZIS Referring to his role, he said: “I am, of course, against the Nazis from the first, but the ‘crime’ that leads to my arrest is that I give Christian burial to a boy who has been shot as a traitor. After several months I escape, and my daughter wants me to go to America, but I feel it is my duty to open the eyes of the German people. I go to my church, push the Nazi minister from the pulpit and deliver a sermon. The church is surrounded by Storm Troopers with drawn revolvers. The last shot shows how I go out to meet them.” Nova Pilbeam, now completely grown up, though some of her fans do not yet believe it, says that hers is the most dramatic role she has had so far.

Marius Goring, who copies the Fuhrer’s voice so well—after listening to countless gramophone records—on the radio in the 8.8.C.’s “Shadow of the Swastika,” is becoming quite used to being a Nazi. And in “U-boat 29” he wa§ a U-boat officer of the last war. He knows the Germans well, as a year or two ago he was a student at a German university, “where I was congratulated on all sides for having the same name as one of their beloved leaders.” A newcomer, whom her discoverers consider a real find, makes her debut in this film. Eighteen years old, with blue eyes and fair hair, the girl’s real name is Ena Stokes. This is not considered romantic enough and will probably be changed. Ena is a star pupil from the Royal Academy of Music. Her dramatic talent was discovered when she acted in an Academy play and her film “rushes” are greatly exciting the brothers Boulting. She plays the part of a tragic village girl.