POPULAR PROGRAMMES

Waikato Times, Volume 127, Issue 29241, 11 October 1940, Page 8

POPULAR PROGRAMMES

Cinema ~. Snapshot: Sense of Humour Becomes Evident Before Cameras Alan Mowbray’s highly developed cense of humour got the better of him during the rehearsal of a scene from •‘Scatterbrain,” Republic musical comedy which is being released throughout New Zealand by British Umpire Films. In the picture Alan Mowbray is a moving picture director, and Judy Canova, Eddie Foy Jr., Joe Cawthom and Ruth Donelly are playing in a scene in his office, a spacious affair that resembles a drawing room, Phil Kramer, in the role of assistant director, rushes into the scene, says a few words and is stumped. He has forgotten his lines. In that interminable pause, in which everybody waited, embarrassed for Phil, Mowbray, in his choicest English drawing room manner, filled in. “Have you met every one?’’ he asked, with a wave towards the players. Even Phil laughed at the line that wasn’t m the script, and Director Gus Meins called for another try. A portrait at Hollywood laughing at itself, “Scatterbrain” bubbles over with the exaggerated idiosyncracies of movie producers, directors, and talent hunters. Talent scout Eddie Foy’s search for a real hillbilly, whom he finally finds and tries to change into a glamour girl is one of the bubbles. Judy Canova is the mountain girl who traded her hogcalling talents for a suite in Hollywood, while her pappy, Emmett Lynn, trades his plough for a bag of golf clubs. Alan Mowbray as the super-egoist director, and Joe Cawthom, running him a close second as a producer with a stack of tonguetwisters in his vocabulary, spare no efforts in poking fun at their Hollywood brothers. The picture is whole-heartedly recommended to all who love good, robust laughs and wonderful nonsense. 4t Prop” Men s Secrets Closely Guarded Although their secrets are closely guarded there is a camaraderie among the nine or ten old-time “prop” men, whose job it is to supply the special effects and conjure up the mysteries that perplex the cinemagoer, which permits an exchange of trade tricks when one of their number is caught out. But at the same time, there is stiff competition among them. In “Captain Caution,” the Kenneth Roberts sea story now' being produced by Hal Roach, audiences will see a man fall from the rail of a ship to be impaled on four swords, a spectacular duel in which the steel sabres give off electric sparks as they clash, a scene in which a man is shot in the face from a distance of six inches (this, according to Oelze and Sanders, Roach’s “special effects” experts, will be an improvement over a similar spectacular shot in “Gone With the Wind”), a cannon ball smashing through the side of a ship, falling into a powder barrel and igniting it, and a bullet passing through a man’s body and out through his back. “They’re pretty good gags,” Oelze and Sanders will admit, which from them means that nothing like it has ever been shown on the screen before. As to how they are performed, they look wisely at each other and say, “All you need are a couple of breakaways, wires, powder (dynamite) and a rat trap.”

Hot Dog Stand Appetising odours of freshly fried breakfast sausages and bacon proved too great a strain on the appetities of Joel McCrea and Laraine Day, his leading lady, during the filming of a scene for Walter Wanger s “Foreign Correspondent.” As a result a hot-dog vendor on the set had a sudden rush of business. The scene, which presented Herbert Marshall, who plays Miss Day’s father, and Eduardo Ciannelli at breakfast in an English home, had McCrea anct Miss Day come barging in, but according to the script, they already had breakfasted, so they refused an invitation to join the others at the meal. While Marshall and Ciannelli smacked their lips over the tasty breakfast, the romantic leads had to sit by and watch with their mouths watering. The moment director Alfred Hitchcock called “cut,” both made a dash for the hot dog stand. Charles Chaplin Almost Completed Charlie has just about finished his picture. The final shots show little Charlie beside a 90-foot cannon. Some 400,000 feet of film were shot in making this picture; it cost something in the neighbourhood of 2,000.000 dollars. As always, Charlie has done it in his own way and in his own time. But he’s on the home stretch of the most eagerly awaited picture the world has ever known. Legal Villain Does If ell

Harold Huber, who made himself a modest fortune in Hollywood by playing an assortment of villainous roles, is cast in a sympathetic part in Edward Small’s production of “Kit Carson.” new film for United Artists release. Huber, oddly enough in view of his life of crime on the screen, was graduated from Law School and admitted to the bar in New York State.

Cinema . »« Snapshots Korda's “Thief of Bagdad" Uue Shortly Alexander Korda's eagerly awaited “The Thief of Bagdad” (in technicolour) will shortly arrive in this country for early presentation by United Artists. It will be remembered that this Korda extravaganza was practically completed at Denham, except for a few sequences requiring backgrounds which could only be filmed in America. For some time Mr Korda’s Hollywood organisation has been working on these sequences in around the Grand Canyon, the Painted Desert and at Prescott. Arizona, under the direction of Zoltan Korda. Sabu, June Duorez, Conrad Veidt and John Justin, who obtained special leave from the R.A.F.. were taken oqt to Hollywood in order to complete the production.

The Brothers Lilienthal Brought to the Screen Every nation and every age has contributed its share to the heroic story of man’s slow mastery of the art of flight. In that story the brothers Lilienthal occupy an honourable place. Even as boys their thoughts turned to the air and they were often to be found lying on their backs in the meadows ol their uncle’s farm at Demnitz, studying the flights of stork and albatross. They tried out their first flying machine in their mother’s attic and then, in the year 1868, Otto Lilienthal and his brother Gustave constructed a glider with movable lacticed wings and tested it by attaching by block and tackle to the side of a barn. Later they built an artificial mound 50 feet high, which enabled them to take off whichever way the wind was blowing. Otto Lilienthal stepped into his latest glider, took a short preparatory run and launched himself into the air. A high wind was blowing and. after reaching a height of 100 feet, the machine got out of control and he plunged to earth, mortally injured. Lilienthal was a serious student of flying. A record of his 2000 flights was carefully kept and his findings were in the library of the Wright brothers, whose flights years later caused world-wide amazement. Henry Victor plays the part of Otto Lilienthal in Alexander Korda's latest offering “Conquest of the Air.” William Collins plays Percy Pilcher, a young British marine engineer who is a student of the German master. Laurence Olivier takes the part of Vincent Lunardi, who was the first man to make an ascent in a balloon in England.

Daring Action Highlights in Big Sea Epic The roaring action of battles on the high seas, the thrilling, smashing action of two vessels fighting for supremacy, is unfolded with terrific impact and amazing realism in Hal Roach’s “Captain Caution.” the sweeping sea epic based on Kenneth Roberts’ best seller. The scope of sweeping action on the screen has always been limitless because of the versatility of the camera, and never has this been more forcefully proved than in the vividly realistic sequences which are unreeled. But* flaming action is not the only highlight in this new adventure romance. Starred in the film are Victor Mature and Louise Platt, and in prominent supporting roles are such favourites as Leo Carrillo, Bruce Cabot, Vivienne Osborne, Robert Barrat and Miles Mander. The screenplay for the production was written by the noted scenarist, Grover Jones. ‘ ‘Foreign Cor res pond enl 9 Director -Alfred Hitchcock has completed dramatic production of “Foreign Correspondent.” said to be the most spectacular screen drama of a decade. Picturised from an original screen-plav five months in preparation, “Foreign Correspondent” reauired 14 weeks before the cameras and employed more than 3000 players in support of Joel McCrea. Laraine Day, Herbert Marshall, George Sanders. Robert Benchley, Albert Basserman. Harry Davenport, Edmund Gwenn and Eduardo Ciannelli. The drama, which covers four countries and crosses the Atlantic both ways as it runs its length at a constantly accelerating pace, reveals the intimate and exciting adventures of an American newspaperman abroad. Producer Walter Wanger put more than £250.000 into director Hitchcock’s budget and added another £65.000 for a climax sequence which studio veterans claim to be the most tenselv dramatic scene ever filmed. Seventy-eight sets, including reproductions of Waterloo Station. Westminster Tower and the Soho district of London, a public square in Amsterdam, and some thrilling scenes made at sea, are among the authentic backgrounds tor the story.

I\ the interest of realism, George B. Seitz, director of Edward Small’s “Kit Carson,” saw to it that the cast was fed from an oldfashioned chuck wagon while on location in Arizona. Old-time westerners, with which the cast is liberally besprinkled, heartily enjoyed this return to other days, and Jon Hall, Lynn Bari and others in tlie cast found it a pleasant novelty.