Only Successes Wanted by Fullers

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 164, 1 October 1927, Page 22 (Supplement)

Only Successes Wanted by Fullers

Sydney Like New York AMERICANISING AUSTRALIA John Fuller, representing Fuller Theatres, Ltd., owners of 53 theatres in Australia and New Zealand, is in New York to buy rights for that territory on musical comedies particularly and on spoken plays of sufficiently general appearance to make their success in the Antipodes likely. He will remain eight or ten weeks.

His visit, however, creates no market for scripts of unproduced plays or musical comedies. He will buy only pieces that have proved successes in America. “The distances between our cities of theatrical production size in Australia is so great that we do not gamble much on new pieces,” he explained. “We do produce a few home products of the type you call ‘mug’ shows here, for the popularpriced trade, and some of them do very well, but practically all the producing that is done down there is of assured successes from America and England. “W© are very much like Americans, you know,” he continued. “If you were to go into Sydney you could hardly know you weren’t' in a part of New York, except for the difference in accent and slang you hear on the street. Your American films have had a great part in Americanising Australia. We don’t resent it, as the British at home appear to be doing. We’re taking only the best from America. We’re not taking for instance, your judiciary system, nor your prohibition.” . . . John Fuller shook with mirth. “Every time I see an American in a saloon bar at home I say: “There, thank God, goes a man who has helped make it impossible for Australia ever to try liquor prohibition.” Mr. Fuller is a-short, wiry, very much alert individual in tweeds, his face reddened from a long sea voyage, says an American interviewer. He has already seen two of the musical hits held over from last season, and will probably not buy either of them. His firm had already bought “Rio Rita” rights from Florenz Ziegfeld and will produce that musical play in Australia at Christmas time. Ernest Rolls, an Englishman connected with Fuller Theatres, Ltd., has been in New York for some weeks and arranged the “Rio Rita” deal. Asked what the firm would do about duplicating the Albertina Rasch ballet in “Rio Rita,” Mr. Fuller said it would use Australian girl dancers. “They’re very keen and work hard, you know; we find them much better material than the English dancers.” He will try to take back a few girls familiar with the American routines to help coach the Australian steppers.