BANNED IN GERMANY

Wairarapa Times-Age, 4 May 1939, Page 5

BANNED IN GERMANY

GRETA GARBO AND SHIRLEY TEMPLE. Germans will have to. go abroad in future if they want to see first-rate American films with Greta ■ Garbo, Clark Gable, Shirley Temple, Robert Taylor , or Claudette Colbert.- . In an attempt to drive American films out of the country, Hitler has ordered that film importers must bring -only second-rare American films. New German fillrs will then be able to shine. The official reason for the order is that America’s leading film companies are Jewish-controlled., The few Hollywood films imported into Germany recently have filled cinemas wherever they have been shown. A drastic purge of Germany's Statecontrolled film industry has already begun. There has been a reshuffle of officials in the leading companies. Ufa, Terra and Tobis. New producers have been appointed to bring German films to Hollywood standard. In Neubabelsberg, the film colony fifteen miles west of Berlin, everybody is expecting to be the next, victim of the purge. German producers have for years been looking for a substitute for Marlene Dietrich, Hitler’s favourite film star, who refuses to leave Hollywood for her native country. So scarce is talent that foreign film stars, such as Pola Negri, a Pole, and Zarah Leander,

a Swede, have been brought from abroad to keep up box-office receipts. This has forced Nazi film leaders to overlook the Jewish origin of several foreign film favourites now starring in Nazi films. It is also proposed, for propaganda reasons, to show more Italian films in the Reich. This will also help the new producers to make Germans believe that their films are the best, for the Italian productions are second-rate compared even with the German. Four major American film companies have withdrawn from the Italian market because of a decree for a State monopoly of importation and distribution.