DUMBO JOINS THE FLEET

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 5, Issue 54, 18 May 1942, Page 2

DUMBO JOINS THE FLEET

ROYAL NAVY SEES FILMS BEFORE ANYBODY ELSE Every British warship, from destroyers upwards, is a floating cinema nowadays. Whether they are in Arctic Mediterranean or Pacific waters, the men on board see the • atest films, often before they are -shown to the general public ashore. "Dumbo," the Walt Disney film about a little elephant ashamed of his big ears, was ;/en at sea long before it was generally! released. All films for the Royal Navy are sent out as scon as they are made. So far 434 films have been shown at 35,000 performances, while f>o news reels a week are going out to H.M. ships and providing the only visual news the men hove of what is happening ashore. Each ship has from one to three programmes a week, made up cf the best of the feature films, interest "shorts" and news reels. Supplied by Britains film industry at the bare cost of the print— one penny a foot —the films go round from, ship to ship until they are so old that they are .scrapped. Men whose ships are on monotonous patrol or convoy work, sometimes at sea. for weeks on end, greatly appreciate the shews. The programmes are selected by Commander A. W. Jarratt, who was called in the peace-time film industry "the man who knows what the public wants." Now he seems to have discovered what the Navy wants, for his selections are universally voted by ships' companies to ba better than they ever saw on land.