FANTASTIC STORY

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 3, Issue 701, 29 November 1933, Page 3

FANTASTIC STORY

MODERN JONAHS UNIQUE EXPERIENCE OF ACTOR IN FILMING OF PICTURE. SCEN1ES INSIDE SHARKS. iScreen actors . ihave found themselves in m'any strange situations during the filming of pictures in | H'ollywood's history, but ro assignj ment ever was so bizarre as the exI perience of a group of Chinese atmospheric players in "I Cover the | Wlaterfront," Reliance's romantic ' thriller for United Artists. They were- paid to be modern Jonahs only instead of whales, they hiad to live inside huge sharks. This fantastic situation, which in according to authorities as it sounds, accordng to authorities who for yeiars 'have been combatting the smuggling of Chinese into California, was niecessary to fit the story acti'on in the picture based on Max Miller's hest-- ' sellin'g book, "I Cover the Water- | front." i' Giamt Sharks Caught. .Ben Lyon, playing opposite Claud- ' ette Colbert, has the role of a reporter who aids federal men in running down a gang of pseudo-fisher-men, headed hy Ernest Torrence, whose real racket is smuggling into the United States. After landing hordes of the undesirable aliens under the very noses of the authorities, the mystery finally is solved. The Chinese are inside sharks delivered to a fertiliser factory. In bringing this action to the screen, the film company, undef the direction of James Cruze, the man responsible for "The Covered Wa ggon," "Old Ironsides," land other epical productions, cruised the hi'gh seas off the Californian coast until it encountered a school of huge sharks. After a battle lasting for hours, and while cameras and sound equipment recorded the action, harpooners succeeded in landing several of the monsters, some of them 25 feet long and weighing three tons. These "elephant" sharks ara among the largest found in any place on the glohe, and this particular school was the higgest ever known in California. Returning more than 100 miles to the waterfront location at the. port of San Pedro, where the United States battle fleet, and the U.S.&. Constitution, popularly known as Old Ironsides, added to the "atmosphere," the sharks were strung up with the aid of steel cranes, and the Chinese placed inside them. for some of the climatic scenes in "I Cover the Waterfront." Bound hand and foot with chains (the smugglers, in the story, being already to throw them overboard and destroy the evidenee in case of pursuit and capture by U.S. Coiast Guard boats), the Chinese extras were enabled to breathe, by means of a gas mask contrivance, attached to rubber tubes running to the openad jiaws of the dead monsters. Outside of having to burn their clotlus and scrub themselves thoroughly after emulating Jonab, Oriental actors sufferad no ill effects as a result of the unique experience.