Hollywood and Heather

Waikato Times, Volume 124, Issue 20774, 6 April 1939, Page 4

Hollywood and Heather

Cinema . Snapshots

When it reaches the screen, “Wuthcring Heights ” should be even more British than the Bronte novel itself. Almost the entire cast—Merle Oberon, Laurence Olivier, Flora Robson, Hush Williams —is. if not Yorkshire born, at least British; and to judge from advance details, the settings are even more sternly un-American. A unit of cameramen spent several weeks in Yorkshire, filming the moorlands and making careful copies of period buildings. Back in Hollywood, the houses were re-erected and the location experts began to seek some American countryside which looked like Yorkshire. This they found fifty miles from Hollywood, in the Conejo Hills; and there the cast has been doing scenes which occur outside the rebuilt English manor. The only detail missing was heather. None grows in that part of America. Accordingly, Hie “ props ” ordered a thousand heather bushes from Britain. When they arrived, customs officials held them at the port, explained that heather could only be landed if cut, because of the danger of importing fruit fly or potato bugs; it imported uncut, it would have to be fumigated. As the plants were needed for several weeks, both courses seemed hopeless. Eventually, after a lot of persuasion on the part of Mr Goldwyn and his staff, the authorities relented, on condition that the heather was taken to the location in qealed cases and immediately destroyed when used.