IN HOLLYWOOD

New Zealand Listener, Volume 32, Issue 813, 25 February 1955, Page 6

IN HOLLYWOOD

WE are in a room in 20th CenturyFox, Hollywood. This room belongs to the Supervising Director of the Properties Department. His name is Walter Scott, and at the moment he is working on the properties for the film Désirée, which is. set in the Napoleonic period and stars.Marlon Brando and Jean Simmons. In the middle of our conversation (continued on next page)

(continued from previous page) the telephone rings and Mr. Scott talks for a moment, then replaces the receiver. "That was Paris," he explains. "The second unit working on location over there have used the wrong coloured wheels on one of the carriages. So we'll have to change the colour on the dupli- . cate we use for scenes shot over here." That is one of the incidents used by Jack Dobson to record on tape from the studio lot how Hollywood sets about making an historical film, and especially the care taken to remove inaccuracies and keep the settings and costumes historically accurate. The documentary is entitled Film City, It is the first of three programmes (selected from a series of seven recorded by Jack Dobson while touring in the United States last year) to be broadcast in the Sunday National link-Film City at 9.30 a.m. on Sunday, March 6, with Hawaiian Interlude and Shasta Daylight at the same time on the following two Sundays. In adcition to taking listeners round the various departments concerned with Désirée, Mr. Dobson interviews two of the most important people involved, the director, Henry Koster (his favourite film is the one he is working on-it always is), and Miss Simmons herself, who closes the programme with a message to her New Zealand fans. All seven of the talks in this series, entitled North American Journey, will be heard from the ZB stations on Sundays at 2.0 p.m., and 2ZA at 10.45 aim., starting on Sunday, March 6. The first programme from the ZBs is Floating City, which takes listeners from the propeller tunnel to the bridge of the 28,000ton liner Oronsay. Here, about 90 feet

above the sea, Mr. Dobson interviews the "Old Man," Captain Burnnand. Nor is the title, Floating City, an exaggeratidn, for on the 14 decks over 2000 people are housed and fed. The programme This is San Francisco comes next, followed by Hawaiian Interlude, with an introduction by the Governor of the Hawaiian Territories. After that, An American Sunday, as seen by a New Zealander, is described, and then Shasta Daylight tells the story of the American train of that name en route from San Francisco to Portland. Oregon.