IN THE MELTING POT.

Waikato Times, Volume 105, Issue 17750, 29 June 1929, Page 17 (Supplement)

IN THE MELTING POT.

ENGLISH ENTERTAINMENT WORLD. EFFECT OF THE TALKIES. Frederick Lonsdale, the dramatist, writes in the London Daily Mail:—The English entertainment world is in the mletirig pot. Mr. Warner, of Warner Bros., Mr. Jesse Lasky, and Mr. Waiter Wanger, the managing director of the production department of Famous Players Lasky, did not come over here for their own amusement. Their object is to buy plays, to see with their own eyes what effect the talking pictures are having on the English public, and to safeguard themselves by subsidising the theatre over here.

I have seen a great deal of Mr. Wanger and Mr. Lasky during their visit, so I know. They are 5,000 times more concerned with the theatre than they were in the days of the silent film. Mr. Lasky, I find from personal experience, is prepared to buy and produce in a theatre any suitable English play to guarantee the talking-film rights when the run Is over. He told me so himself.

“ I am more concerned," he said, “ with the production of new plays than I ever was before.”

Theatre Very Much Alive

This proves that the theatre is not dead. On the contrary it is very much alive. If any English manager gets frightened and thinks his living is in jeopardy he will not have the slightest difficulty in letting his theatre to the talking film people. It is common knowledge that negotiations are taking place for several legitimate theatres at the moment, though I must not quote any names. In a year’s time I prophecy that half or more of the London theatres will be in the hands of talking picture firms. Already the leading English actors are seeing which way th' l wind is going t.o blow. Sir Gerald da Maurier and Mr. Seymour Hicks are 0.,!y two of those who have joined the boards of film companies. Yet nobody realises better than the film magnates themselves that the novelty of talking pictures wall wear off in a short while and they will take their proper level in the entertainment business. Only the plays that the public like will be successful. Difficult Time for Producers.

So the producers are going to have a difficult time. They will find that no first-class actor will play an unattractive, badly written part, in which he will be seen by 20,000,000 people and inevitably ruin his career with a single play. No, the actor will insist on a good play in which to appear.

If the dramatists of the wmrld sit quiet ultimately they will control the talking films in the way that they now control the theatre.

Mr. Lasky finally told me that he proposes to open a talking picture studio studio here, w'here he could produce plays as films the very minute that there is a single good English talking picture produced. He added that when this occurred he would at once buy the American rights of the talking picture.