LOST PRESTIGE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 8 June 1939, Page 4

LOST PRESTIGE

HOLLYWOOD’S EFFORT TO REGAIN IT. Remarking in an interview that Hollywood was gathering its forces for a supreme effort to regain some of the prestige which it has lost in recent years, Douglas Fairbanks indicated the two-million-dollar “Gunga Din” as an example of this determination showing itself in practical form. “Like so many of the great American pictures, the new film, ‘Gunda Din,’ is English in spirit, and founded on the work of one of the greatest modern English writers,” Mr Fairbanks pointed out. Fairbanks said it was ironical that when in 1932 the American film industry wanted to produce an outstanding motion picture to re-awaken public interest in films it chose, an English play in “Cavalcade” for the purpose. The phenomenal success of that picture gave Hollywood, the fillip it needed at the time. Now. when Hollywood once again finds itself the target of. deprecatory criticism, one studio at least finds the answer in another English production, in another picture glorifying the English tradition, this time the tradition of British rule in India.