FRENCH FILM MAGNATE

Waikato Times, Volume 124, Issue 20728, 11 February 1939, Page 17 (Supplement)

FRENCH FILM MAGNATE

ARRESTED FOR ALLEGED SWINDLE £35,000 INVOLVED Accused by shareholders in his companies of a huge swindle, Bernard Nathan, “Tsar” of the French film industry, has been arrested. The allegations arise out of the bankruptcy in 1935 of the Cinemas-Pathe Holding Company and the Societe CinemaPathe, says the “News of the World.” Two of Nathan’s associates, Jean Simon-Cerf, and Alexandre Johannides, are also under arrest. The amount involved in the accusations against the men is £35,000. Nathan, an Armenian, whose real name is ‘Bernard Tanenzaph, arrived in 1920. Within eight years he was at the head of a £2,500,000 film company. After the advent of the talkies, his company produced several films of international reputation, but the shareholders did not receive the profits they had expected. They formed a committee, which in 1934 lodged a complaint. Nathan was a producer in his own studios, and at the Pathe studios at Joinville, near Paris, of such # wellknown films as “Jeanne d’Arc,” “Le Roi des Resquilleurs,” which might be translated “The Arch-Swindler,” and “Les Croix du Bois‘,” based on the tragedies of the Great, War from the book by Roland Dorgeles. Trouble began when he floated film company after film company, until his original concern was declared bankrupt. The affair created a sensation in the film world. Simon-Cerf is a prominent clubman and wealthy owner of a successful racing stable. Johannides is a Greek, an engineer whose name is scarcely known.