Strict Law Robs Britain of Own Child Film Star

Taranaki Central Press, Volume IV, Issue 303, 7 December 1936, Page 2

Strict Law Robs Britain of Own Child Film Star

HOLLYWOOD SHOWS HOW Why hasn’t Great Britain got a child film star of its own —an all-British equivalent of Shirley Temple? (asks a correspondent in an English paper). The answer —any British film producer will point it out with justifiable bitterness —is contained in a prosaic booklet entitled “The Children and Young Persons Act, 1933.” Mercilessly tying the British producer's hands, this Act—though it was framed only four years ago —does not >n«e contain the word “cinema.” A producer is permitted to employ a child between the ages of twelve and fourteen for a short period each lay. But the Act says this must be at t stipulated time —or the producer may ?e heavily fined. “In nine cases out of ten, this short jeriod each day falls at an impossible lour for the film producer,” Mr Michtel Balcon, Director of Productions of ;he Gaumont-Efritish Company, told me. :‘The time-limit makes film-making with children, .absolutely prohibitive in ;his country. The very fact that the Act provides some modifications to snable kiddies to work in theatres convinces us that the Act is unfairly ’ramed from our point of view.” The same opinion is held by the noted jroducer Herbert Wilcox, who has his )wn company at Elstree and Pinewood, md Mr Arthur Dent, of British Interlational Pictures.

Both have recently employed children in their studios, and hoped that the luthorities would ‘'look the other ivay.” Both have been fined for their optimism. Then Denham studios, however, are hoping to employ children under the ige-limit. Recently a child scored a great suc:ess in a film which featured Beniamino Gigli, the tenor. And the scenario of the first film of Paderewski, the famous pianist, makes provision for a little girl. An official of the Buckinghamshire County Council told me: “We are aware of the technical difficulty concerning the employment of children in the Denham studios, and a representative of our Education Committee will shortly be meeting a studio executive. Producers in this country are unanimous that the already out-of-date law which completely ignores the claims of our important film industry should be reformed. Hollywood points the solution ’by its own treatment of children who work in its studios. 1 A child’s contract insists that she be given a proper education by a teacher who lives in the studios expressly foi that purpose.