Radio Station Replica To Film Setting

Dominion, Volume 32, Issue 153, 24 March 1939, Page 14

Radio Station Replica To Film Setting

THE National Broadcasting Company’s auditorium at its studio in Radio City, New York, was brought to the screen for the first time when a replica of the original was built on a film studio sound stage for a broadcast sequence of .“Sweethearts,” in which Jeanette MacDonald sings with an eighty-piece orchestra. Copied in detail, even to the control room, the film set was constructed so that broadcasting procedure could be followed to the letter. Several hundred extras formed the audience. Miss MacDonald’s number was “Summer Serenade,” Herbert Stothart’s arrangement of . Victor Herbert’s “Badinage,” originally a piano selection, but with modern lyrics written by Chet Forrest and Bog Wright. A mixed chorus of forty also sang the chorus.

Paul Kirby, symphony orchestra conductor, now a member of the M.-G.-M. music department, led the studio orchestra augmented by solo instruments from the Los Angeles Philharmonic. Coyne Whitman, known to American radio audiences for his “Chandu, the Magician,” played the role of the commentator.

A FTER six years in Hollywood, Ray Milland is making a brief visit to his native England. Upon his return to Hollywood he will play the lead in the film version of Kipling's “The Light That Failed.”

“ESCAPE FROM ALCATRAZ” will be produced by Warner Bros, as a sequel to the successful “Alcatraz” of last year, the studio anounces. Ann Sheridan, Humphrey Bogart and John Litel, principals of the earlier film, will be re-united in “Escape From Alcatraz.”