Screen and Stage

Otago Daily Times, Issue 26623, 20 November 1947, Page 2

Screen and Stage

By JAXON

Robert Flaherty, the grand old man of the documentary movement, to-day finds himself in one of the most creative periods of his highly productive career, lie has just completed more than a year’s work on " The Louisiana Story,” a dramatic fantasy about a Cajun boy in the Bayou country. His historic “ Nanook of the North,” a picture of Eskimo life made in 1921 and generally considered the first documentary film,, has been reissued by United Artists in London. ” Nanook ” will soon open in New York, Hongkong and South Africa, and is being dubbed in Spanish, Portuguese and Dutch. Flaherty’s “ Elephant Boy,” made in India 10 years ago with the then unknown Sabu, is being brought out again by Film Classics. Flaherty himself is meanwhile planning to return to India soon to make another documentary film there, and has a number of ideas for pictures based on regional life in the United States. Oscar Levant has returned to Hollywood to prepare for his role In “ The Flapper Age ” for Twentieth CenturyFox. Margaret Rutherford, who provided classic examples of respectable eccentricity in “Blithe Spirit ” (as the spiritualist medium) and “ English Without Tears (as an international bird-preserver), has created a character of the same type for “ Miranda,” the new Gainsborough comedy. She is seen in the role of Nurse Cary, custodian of a mermaid. Betty Grable and Harry James will make an album of recordings together, to be called “ The James Family Album. They have not yet selected their numbers. * • • Michael Duane, Columbia contract player, was chosen to play the male lead in “ Keeper of the Bees,” a feature to be based on the Gene Stratton Porter novel. Duane’s previous role was an important supporting part in the “ Swordsman," a technicolor story of a feud between Scottish clans in the eighteenth century. Columbia has entered into a contract with the Beckworth Corporation for the release and distribution of two Rita Hayworth productions each year for the next seven years. » * • Esther Somers, noted Broadway actress, returned from her six months’ London portrayal of “ Mrs Anthropus ” in Laurence Olivier’s production of “ The Skin of Our Teeth,” with Vivian Leigh, and remained in Hollywood for a brief but important role in Twentieth Century-Fox “ The Snake Pit.” • • * Despite the most careful pre-release scrutiny by studio personnel, scenes continually creep'in which provoke completely unexpected responses from the audiences. “ Nora Prentiss ” has one such scene, but the hilarity which it has produced was unintentional, for no script writer could foresee that the release of the film would coincide with a wave .of popularity for a nonsensical song entitled ” Open the Door, Richard! ” In the drama, there is a scene where Ann Sheridan, anxious to talk to Kent Smith in an adjoining room, plaintively calls him by name while tugging at the door separating them. It seems that Mr Smith’s name in the film :s Dr Richard Talbot, and audiences have been responding to Miss Sheridan's plea by chanting—well, the answer is obvious. * * • Lee and Lynn Wilde, blonde twins formerly under contract to M-G-M before they retired from the screen in favour of marriage, will return to pictures in ” Campus Honeymoon,” a college musical romance which is in production at Republic. The twins have been signed for the feminine leads in the film, which is a comedy about the housing shortage on a college campus. * • • The Cagney brothers, James and William, were so pleased with the way things went during the filming of “ The Time of Your Lite,” the Saroyan play, that they are attempting to round up the entire cast of that recently completed picture for their next effort. This will be ” Only the Valiant,” the Charles Marquis Warren novel. James will star, of course,, and among those he and William are now seeking new commitments from are William Bendix, Wayne Morris, Broderick Crawford, Ward Bond and Paul Draper Carol Reed has gone to work on “ The Basement Room,” retitled “ Lost Illusions.” This is the Graham Greene short story about a mysterious death in a London house seten through the eyes of a child. The owners of the. house are out of town: their small son is left in charge of the butler and his wife; the wife is found dead at the bottom of the stairs; the butler, in love with a little French girl who works around the comer, is suspected of murder on the innocent testimony of the boy. Ralph Richardson will play the butler, and Michele Morgan the little French girl. The story has been rewritten and now takes place in a foreign embassy in London. “ Nobody else in England could afford to keep up such a big house these days," says Mr Reed. * * » Tyrone Power has scheduled a stop at Port Said on his current air flight around Africa. “ Ever since I dug the Suez Canal in * Suez,’ ” he said, “ I’ve been wanting to see the base of my operations.” * * * Queenie Smith has been given the role of " Lola ” in “ The Snake Pit,” now before the cameras at the Twentieth Cen-tury-Fox. Olivia de Havilland stars in the film * * * ” Thunder in the Valley ” will be the new title for “ Bob, Son of Battle,” the technicolor picture starring Lon McCallister with Peggy Ann Garner and Edmund Gwenn. * * * One of the most interesting British films of the year will be Sir Alexander Korda’s “ Cyrano de Bergerac.” “ Cyrano " has been a Korda property for more than 10 years, and Charles Laughton, Laurence Olivier and Ralph Richardson have ail been mentioned at some time as favourites for the role of the man with the nose. Orson Welles will direct and star in the film, and plans to work on the script while he is cutting ” Macbeth ” in Hollywood. He is very clear what he wants and does not want to do with " Cyrano.” He does not want to do it in the traditional theatre manner, all rouge and plush and gallantries. His idea is to treat the character as a complex psychopathic case; a man whose tragedy is not that his nose gets in the way of romance, but that he thinks it c oes. ” Cyrano’s temperament, not his nose was his trouble,” he says, “ and the climate finished him. He was a hotblooded southerner, a Gascon, who found himself living in a bleak, unfriendly Paris, and in the end he simply died of the cold, spiritually and physically.”