HOLLYWOOD TRICKS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 23 November 1939, Page 6

HOLLYWOOD TRICKS

FAKED TROPIC PLANTS. Palm trees, which are eighty’ per cent of a tropical isle’s lure, have no appeal to the cinema camera. That is, palm trees constructed by nature are sorely lacking in qualities to make them photogenic, a fact long ago established by’ ill-fated location trips to far-off lands in quest of artistic backgrounds. As a result, when Samuel Goldwyn required a hundred or more trees to dress a six-acre set at Hollywood, he constructed on his back lot for “The Real Glory." starring Gary Cooper, he ordered that all palms be built in his own shops. To Nick Stadler, wizard of growing things, fell this task and it is one with which he is i not unfamiliar, having gone through much the same routine for Goldwyn’s "The Hurricane." First of all.' Stadler takes an old telephone pole that is shaped in a fair reproduction of a palm pole’s graceful curve. It is topless. but securely anchored in heavy timber for it will support a top-heavy-cluster of leaves, and perhaps bunches of coconuts. On this pole Stadler and his men wrap layer on layer of old newspapers. It is carefully applied, smoothly and with occasional section divisions to simulate the leaf scars on the trunk. Before one’s eyes the tree grows. Additional bumps and scars are supplied by’ the judicious use of a plaster composition and finally the trunk is painstakingly painted and coated with a shiny varnish. It is this extra coating which makes the trees appear the way they’ do before the camera.