Producer and Distributor

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 538, 15 December 1928, Page 13 (Supplement)

Producer and Distributor

Australasian Films

The firm of Australasian Films, Ltd., is of particular interest to New Zealanders because it is a film-distributing company with only Australian capital. It was formed to make readily available to New Zealand theatres the products of several of the smaller overseas companies, particularly Warner Bros, and Columbia Pictures, who do not have distributing agencies of their own. All the films handled by Australasian Films are then known as Master Pictures.

In addition, Australasian Films have entered the business of film production on their own account, and two pictures made exclusively by this company "For the Term of His Natural Life” and “The Adorable Outcast,” have been V,ery well received in Auckland.

The confirmed movie fan, the occasional picturegoer and the individual who is finicky about his screen entertainment will all hail with joy the announcement that Syd Chaplin in “The Fortune Hunter” is to be brought to New Zealand as a Master Picture.

There is much occasion for the joy. To begin with, Syd Chaplin is sucli an artist that he is welcome in anything in which he elects to be seen and, again, “The Fortune Hunter” needs little or no introduction.

As a play, this comedy was one of the biggest successes known to the legitimate stage. At one time there were no fewer than five companies touring America in it. Winchell Smith, its author, and producer, made fortunes out of it and, what is more, the comedy will go down in history as furnishing John Barrymore with his first great stage success.

In “The Fortune Hunter,” the charm lies in the wholesomeness of the story and the cleverness of the characterisation of types that are sympathetic and human. Syd Chaplin is seen as a young fellow who takes up his home in the village in order that he may marry into one of the well-to-do families. Of course, he does not do anything of the- kind.