Valuable Cocktail Dress

Wanganui Chronicle, 27 November 1948, Page 8

Valuable Cocktail Dress

If Virginia Field’s cocktail dress in Eagle Lion’s “Repeat Performance” has a regal air about it. it’s not without reason. The gown is fashioned of rare cloth of silver sent her by the fabulously wealthy Maharajah of Cooch-Bahar, near Calcutta, India. Metallic silver, beaten fabric thin, was used in creating the unusual material, valued at more than £5O per yard. Miss Field born in England first met the Maharajah-to-be while they were both youngsters in London, and they have been friends ever since.

Two Parallels Only. A Peer was on trial at Pinewood Studios recently, where Ealing Studios are making Michael Balcon’s production, “Kind Hearts and Coronets.” It was a scene which has only two parallels in the past 50 years, and considerable research was necessary to obtain the ritual of a Peer being arrainged before his fellow Peers on a charge of murder. Dennis Price plays the part of a voting man who has planned eight murders in order to attain the title and so goes on trial. The setting was the Royal Gallery of the House of Lords, reproduced for the first time in a film, and was one of the most elaborate settings ever built by the Ealing Studios craftsmen.

Wardrobe Difficulty. Historical barristers’ wigs and gowns worn by Gregory' Peck, Charles Laughton and Charles Coburn in David O. Selznick’s “The Paradine Case,’’ were imported from London. The barrister’s robes, which are over 200 years old. were obtained after long negotiations with Old Bailey court officials. Shortage of material to make both the wigs and gowns made it impossible for the studio wardrobe department to create costumes.