FILM SIDELIGHTS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 3 November 1938, Page 5

FILM SIDELIGHTS

PICTURES AND PLAYERS ON PARADE Joe E. Brown Leaves Hospital. After Joe E. Brown, the film comedian had insisted on attending football matches in an ambulance, his doctors, in despair, allowed him to leave hospital. Brown was operated on to correct an internal injury, which was suffered when he lifted the 3001bs. wrestler, •Man Mountain” Dean, in a film. Too Grim. The film version of Stefan Zweig's “Marie Antoinette” —in which Norma Shearer returns to the screen —has apparently been found a little too grim for 1938. audiences. The original version which arrived in Sydney recently ran for 2 hours 40 minutes at the preview, but M.G.M. evidently discovered in America that there was something wrong with it, for a revised version is on its way from Hollywood. Reel 15 has been cut entirely, and replacements for this and various other portions of the film will arrive shortly. Longest Speech. The longest single speech made for a motion picture since the advent of sound is reported to have been recorded for the Columbia picture, “Girls’ School.” The speech, a five-minutes address to students of an exclusive finishing school, was made by Heather Thatcher, once a London musical comedy star. The actress’s performance before the camera covered 450 feet without a single error. An Italian “Indian.” America’s Number One “Indian” is an Italian. For 29 years Nick Thompson has been an Indian, although he was born of Italian parentage in Houston, Texas. Being an Indian has been his meal ticket. It began when he played a half-bred in “The Girl, The Sweetheart, and The Bandit,” the second one-reeler filmed by the old Pathe Company in America in a barn at Jersey City Heights, with Margaret St. Clair as the star. ./ Thompson celebrated his twentyninth year and his two hundred and twenty-third role as an Indian by playing Billy Jackrabbit in “The Girl of the Golden West.” z