MEET MAX SCHACH

Stratford Evening Post, Volume IV, Issue 225, 3 September 1936, Page 2

MEET MAX SCHACH

FROM GAY VIENNA

As A Small Boy He Had Big Ideas.

REACHED MATERIALISA-

TION.

StroMing down a side street in Vienna 40 years ago, you wouid have seen a few lads kicking a ball about. One, when they stopped for a cup of tea, confessed he wanted to be a journalist, another an actor, another a producer. . . .

Big ideas!

Fifteen years ago, strolling around west-end of Berlin, casually running

your eye over the Berliner Tageblatt, you would have caught what Max Schach had to say about latest plays and books, that Karl Grune was to direct films for U.R.A. And then, glancing up, you would have seen Fritz Kortner's name going up in electric lights; but you would have forgotten the tea-party in the Vienna side street where Elizabeth Bergner was now playing hop-scotch. Planning Big Films. Max Schach, neat, diminutive, with a heavy foreign accent, now sits at a huge table in a Regent Street office, chief of Capitol Films, Trafalgar Films, making big contracts, planning r.ensational productions. His director is Karl Grune. Max Schach signed up Fritz Kortuer to quarter-star with Cedric Hardwicke, Ralph Richardson, and possibly Clive Brook in a bralndnew Priestley story, "International GJuartet," to be made at Denham when the studios are completed. Max just loves the ."International Quartet" idea. Four men, of unequal ages, belonging to different nations — France, Germany, Russia, England—stay at the same Hampstead boardinghouse. Playing with these puppets, Priestley has produced a glorious satire on the League of Nations, com- j plete with walkings-out, notes of pro- J test, intrigues, alliances. Hardwicke plays Frenchman; Kortner, Russian; Richardson pukka Englishman, and Max is negotiating for Clive Brook for the German. To give inevitable soft-1 ening touch, star-in-a-night Vivienne ! Leigh has been roped in for the single | feminine part. Directing will be Thornton Freeland, responsible for "Amateur Gentleman." Enterprise. So much for Max's enterprise as j bead of Capitol Films. This month j he also signed a contract as asso- ! ' ciate producer, with United Artists to make three pictures annually for their release. The deed done, Max put down his pen, rubbed his chin and thought about some of the grand ideas he'd had in the past. Then clicked his fingers—" Got it!" What j about filming opera stories as they j ought to be produced? What about J "Pagliacci"? j

True, M.G.M. was in the field buying up rights, right and left; but he'd have a shot. An inquiry about "Pagliacci" to Asherberg Hopwood's Spanish agent brought news that M.G.M. had the option.

Max got no sleep that night. Too bad of Metro, to beat him to it. Next morning Max missed his breakfast. Then he picked up the 'phone . . . called Spain.

"How much was M.G.M. offering? Right; I'll give you £20,000 for all rights!" But it was a case of the clock deciding, for M.G.M.'s option lasted till 2 p.m. that clay. "If they haven't sent the cable from the other end by then it's yours." Max missed lunch as well, and waited. . . . Bell tingled. . . . "Hello! The rights are yours! M.G.M.'s cable timed 2.25." So Max is producing "Pagliacci."

Directing - will he great friend Grime, with Richard Tauher as a study in jealousy who happens to he a singer as well; but singing will play second fiddle to jealousy. Nedda has been booked for a song or two. "Boy!" says Max, "it will be a sen-

sation." Maybe! Then will come a Tom Walls film. After that, "Elizabeth of England."

Stratford already has had a chance of seeing a Max Schach job—in "When Knights Were Bold," featuring the smiling Jack Buchanan.