RELIGIOUS FILM

Wairarapa Times-Age, 2 August 1940, Page 9

RELIGIOUS FILM

STORY OF MARY THE MOTHER. Cecil B. de Mille has begun to plan his next film—a religious drama dealing with the story of Mary, the Mother. This will be a difficult picture to cast. De Mille can’t use any of the much-divorced Hollywood stars in such a foie. He probably will search for some unknown with an unblemished record, and she probably will be a one-picture actress. Those of you who remember “’King of Kings” will recall the sensation it caused when first released, and how much good it did in a troubled world. De Mille hopes this story of Mary will do as much good. By the way, there are 200 prints of ’“King of Kings” still being shown throughout the United States, surely an all-time record for a film. The coming of talkies meant death to so many of the old silent directors, but de Mille just took them in his stride, and even caused the invention of the modern sound camera. He wanted a camera that could move about, an impossibility in the first days of talkies. He gave his engineers the ideas, and

under his supervision they perfected the enclosed sound camera of today. De Mille also invented the camera boom, so that he could swing his camera around and above his gigantic sets and take in the spectacles that he planned.