M-G-M’S MASCOT

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 313, 26 March 1928, Page 12

M-G-M’S MASCOT

LION WILL CROSS PACIFIC INTERNATIONAL FILMS One of the most familiar objects in all screenland is Leo the Lion, the trade mark of the MetroGold wyn- Mayer organisation. Mr. David Lake, general sales manager of this organisation, who is a through passenger to Sydney on the Aorangi, brings news of the impending arrival of Leo Junior, son of the famous father, in New Zealand and Australia. Leo Junior is a splendid specimen of lion babyhood. His future destiny is Australia. He will be a gift to Mr. N. B. Freeman, the general manager for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in Australia and New Zealand.

Mr. Lake has been attending the international congress of his organisation in New York, where 30 delegates represented 58 different countries. “We considered the basis for the international picture and discussed it from every possible angle,” declared Mr. Lake. “This was not a domestic conference. It was a strictly international affair.” Mr. Lake carried with him to America a strip of New Zealand film, the gift of the New Zealand Government, which showed the delegates from almost every portion of the globe, what is being accomplished by the movie industry in far-off New Zealand. In Culver City Mr. Lake met “Miss New Zealand” (Miss Dale Austen). Tie mentioned incidentally the fact that Miss Austen was accorded no fewer than five special screen tests. “The ordinary girl is lucky to obtain one,” he said, “but Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer were determined to leave no stone unturned to give her every chance.” News has since come of Miss Austen’s selection to play opposite Tim McCoy in “The Bushranger.”