HARBOUR AT HOLLYWOOD

Wairarapa Times-Age, 27 September 1940, Page 9

HARBOUR AT HOLLYWOOD

BIGGEST EVER CREATED. Fortthe exterior sequences of the production, "Little Old New York,” 20th Century-Fox build on its north lot in Hollywood the biggest harbour ever seen in Hollywood. The marine basin covered three acres. It was excavated to a depth of seven feet and filled with 5,000,000 gallons of water —a job that took three months in itself. But that was only the beginning of a construction programme probably without parallel in film history. There was first the matter of constructing the innumerable ships used in the picture, including two full-sized sailing vessels and several replicas of the "Clermont” and then of recreating the New York waterfront as it existed at the time the "Clermont” steamed up the Hudson to Albany to sound the death knell of the windjammers. The ships were all turned out at the studio under the direction of Jim Havens, ship designed and Hollywood’s foremost authority on all matters maritime. In raising the towering masts on. the two full-riggers, all the traditions of the sea were followed to the letter. For this delicate job. the studio hired eighteen veterans of the days of iron men and wooden ships, headed by Chris Christenson, another graduate from the hard school of sail and wind who had skippered his own ship at the age of 21.