Movie Stars’ Military Drill.

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 83, Issue 92, 20 April 1939, Page 5

Movie Stars’ Military Drill.

For a week Cary Grant, DouglasFairbanks. junior, and Robert Coote. I on location at the foot of Mount, Whitney for RKO-Radio’s "Gunga Din,” averaged six hours of military drill daily—with the thermometer about 102 in the shade. With Victor McLaglcn, the trio are cast as British soldiers in RKO’s. screen adaptation of Kipling’s famous poem. When drill and parade scenes were rehearsed. McLaglen’s years with the British Army stood him in good stead, but the other three were a bit ragged in their manoeuvres. So Producer-Director George Stevens had them up at 5.30 daily, taking drill instruction with 100 extras from Sergeant-Major William Briers, technical adviser, who spent seven years with a British regiment in India. Th? Scarlet Jacket. The brilliant red uniform of the Canadian Royal Mounted Police, known officially as "the scarlet jacket," has a history and traditional significance that is not generally known. This fact was ascertained during the research work done on Action Pictures’ "Renfrew on the Grea* White Trail/’ sequel to the very popular "Renfrew of the Royal Mounted." tames Newill, who proved so welij liked in the first film, is again starred as the singing Mountie. The scarlet jacket, which Newill wears in the film first came to be designed to attract and command the attention of the Indians of the far North-West, for the Mounted Police were originally organised to secure their safety and champion their rights and liberties. To save ihe helpless redskin from exploitation by renegade white. 300 picked men were selected to form the "Mounties." For this reason the "scarlet jacket” stood for more than the man who wore it and represented ail the forces of law and order in what had been a virtuallv lawless land.