TALKIES

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 13, Issue 41, 14 January 1949, Page 3

TALKIES

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1 cesses, she explains, are, something like this : ' “I tell myself that they are just Waiting to see me make a" fool of myself, that they are thinking what a terrible actress I am, and they are all feeling sorry for me. Then I force myself to think that they are all against me, even the technicians, and I get mad. I begin to feel abused and sorry Tor myself, and I cry. The whole thought process,” says Jeanne, “only takes about 30 seconds, but with me, it certainly works.” A SURPRISE SONG HIT? If “Little Girl Blue,” the tune written for Richard Attenborough and Susan Shaw in “London Belongs To Me” becomes a hit nobody will be more surprised than the composer. Producer Sydney Glib at needed a sentimental dance tune for the film' “Write me,” he told the composer, “a tune that people will feel they have heard a hundred times the first time they hear it.” Tongue in cheek, the composer wrote “Little Girl Blue”, and music publishers are now saying that the tune will be a tremendous success when the film is shown. The composer is still doubtful: he refuses to have it published under his own name.

Satan: “What are you laughing at?” Junior Devil: “I just locked a woman in a room with a thousand hats and no mirrors.”

Film Of The Week

“MINE OWN EXECUTIONER” A film taken from the novel by Nigel Balchin, is Alexander Korda’s latest picture “Mine Own Executioner,” which is now being released in New Zealand by 20th Century Fox. . Starring Burgess Meredith in his first role for British films, “Mine Own Executioner” stars this American actor as Felix Milne, a LayPsychiatrist. By sheer ability, Milne ha's won an outstanding reputation among Lay Practitioners, and despite the prejudice that exists against unqualified men in certain quarters, he enjoys the friendship of those qualified medical men who are fellow members of the staff of the London clinic at which he works. So busy is Milne in ministering to the sick minds of others that he does not fully realise that he himself is undergoing a severe strain, although subconscious appreciation of the fact induces a growing uncertainty and anxiety in his mind. This culminates in a professional and social crisis which threatens to overwhelm him. A new actor, Kieron Moore, former fighter-pilot whose terrible war experiences have left him with a split personality that can translate a kind, likeable young husband, into a potential wife-killer. Barbara White portrays his wife, Molly, a young woman, fully aware of the grave dangers she runs to her very life in standing by her husband, but refusing to desert her post at a time of increasing danger to herself and to him. The story of “Mine Own Executioner” concerns Felix Milne, a psychoanalyst, who agrees to take on the case of an ex-Air Force Officer who, due to the effects of torture and imprisonment by the Japanese, has developed homicidal tendencies. After taking on the case, he becomes involved in an “affair” with another woman, which results in the neglect of his patient. Eventually, his patient, Adam Lucian, kills his wife, Moll. From there, the story goes on to tell how Milne attempts to reason with Lucian, and then comes to the conclusion that actually he is responsible for Moll’s death.

SUCCESS STORY

The story of Christine Norden’s entry into films, her first being that of a married woman with whom Felix Milne falls in love in “Mine Own Executioner”, reads more like a modern fairy tale. She was lining up to buy a ticket for a West End Cinema, when she was spotted by an ex-Hollywood cameraman, then in London as' a private in the United States Army. He persuaded her to pose for some pictures, and then took them along to Sir Alexander Korda, whom he had met in Hollywood. Result—a test and a contract for Miss Nor den, and her first role, in “Mine Own Executioner.”

Outsider Odds For Odd Man Out

Some of the technicians employae on Two Cities “Sleeping Car to Venice” had previously worked on an earlier Two Cities film, “Odd Man Out.” When they saw that there was a horse called Odd Man Out running at Nottingham races, they decided that the horse could not lose. Stars of “Sleeping Car to Venice” Jean Kent and Albert Lieven were sorry they had refused the • tip, when Odd Man Out won at 100-30!

Star Finds It Hard To Cry

Jeanne Crain, now starring in a light comedy romance “You Were Meant For Me”, doesn’t agree that comedy is an actress’s most difficult assignment. Jeanne’s toughest problem, she .says, comes in having to produce tears. In “Apartment for Peggy”, her latest film, Jeanne is called upon to weep buckets of tears in one scene, and she confesses that she uses a round-about method all of her own to start the tear ducts flowing. Some actresses think of sad things when they want to cry, but Jeanne has to get mad in order to do a crying scene, and her thought pro-