RIALTO AND REGENT, EPSOM

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 186, 27 October 1927, Page 16

RIALTO AND REGENT, EPSOM

“HIS NATURAL LIFE” Norman Dawn’s magnificent superspectacle, “For the Term of His Natural .Life,” continues to draw large audiences to the Rialto and Regent Theatres, where the colossal human epic is being screened. Usually the producer is the man who makes the picture and gets a one-line mention on the screen. He seldom hunts publicity, because his heart is in his work, and his work is all the publicity he wants. If the public enjoys the picture he has directed he is a happy man and a successful producer. Just such a man is Norman Dawn, who directed and produced “For the Term of His Natural Life,” the big super production for Australasian Films, Ltd. Dawn is a genius at his own game. He has spent years as a producer in America, and has directed the “Lure of the Yukon” and many other well-known stories with an Alaskan background. He is a quiet individual, whose methods are equally effective, and such a sticker for detail that he will shoot each scene a dozen times rather than use one ineffective portrayal. Though silent and hard to draw into conversation, this man with the megaphone is a very deep and intelligent thinker, who absorbs all and says very little. Fifteen miles out in the Mediterranean from Leghorn, Italy, a fleet of one hundred galleys of the time of Caesar Augustus enactd the greatest naval battle ever staged for a motion picture. These galleys, which took six months to make, were exact replicas of those used by the ancient Romans, and were reconstructed to appear in one of the most spectacular episodes of Fred Niblo’s epic production of “Ben Hur” for Metro-Goldwyn -Mayer. Ramon Novarro, May McAvoy, Claire McDowell, Carmel Myers, Nigel de Brulier, Frank Currier, Betty Bronson and Mitchell Lewis head the huge cast of players appearing in “Ben Hur.”