THE PICTURES

Wairarapa Times-Age, 7 September 1939, Page 4

THE PICTURES

GREATEST ENTERTAINMENT. That motion pictures are the world's greatest entertainment, and that there is nothing at the present time that can even remotely rival them as entertainment for all classes is the opinion of Mr R. R. Doyle, managing director of R.K.O. Radio (Australia and New Zealand) upon his recent return from America.

“This experience,” proceeds Mr Doyle, “has convinced our President, Mr George Schaefer, that the road to prosperity for R.K.0.-Radio lies in one direction only; and that is the steady and regular - production of big highbudgeted pictures.

“The first of these is ‘The Hunchback of Notre Dame.’ With an approved budget of over £200,000 —and with production just above to begin—a halt was called until negotiations were concluded to add Charles Laughton to the cast as the major star of the picture. Laughton’s inclusion —plus cost of delay, etc. —added £50,000 to the cost. But no showman will deny that, big as ‘The Hunchback’ would have been without Laughton, his inclusion as star makes big box-office intakes as near a certainty as one can have in the show business.

Mr Doyle explains that other huge expenditure commitments for the new season include: —£200,000 for Sir Walter Scott’s “Ivanhoe;” a like amount for Broadway’s most successful and spectacular play to be picturised—namely, “The American Way;’’ and yet another huge budget for “Kitchener of Khartoum,” a picture that will be prepared in full detail in Hollywood, with the studio’s best writers working up the script. But the actual shooting will take place in England, with Herbert Wilcox directing and producing, and the British Army and Navy cooperating. Further big production plans, involving very little less than £200,000 a picture, include “Vigil in the Night,” starring Carole Lombard in a dramatisation of Cronin’s latest best-selling book of the same name; and Keye’s great novel, “Parts Unknown,” a production by George Stevens —who with his equally famous contemporaries, Leo McCarey and Gregory La Cava, will do

so much to bring fame to the R.K.0.Radio studios in the new season. • “I have had,” remarks Mr Doyle, “the privilege of going over the full year’s production budget, and in dollars the additional sum being spent as against last year is 6,000,000. “This seems a courageous gesture under the conditions now prevailing in America and abroad; but because of the belief that the big pictures make the big profits, R.K.0.-Radio feel that they are doing the only logical thing under the circumstances. “I cannot conclude without referring to a great picture, produced on the grand scale, and shortly to be shipped here —‘Nurse Edith Cavel,' starring the great actress, Anna Neagle, with support that includes Edna May Oliver, May Robson, Zasu Pitts, George Sanders and H. B. Warner.”