We use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) during our scanning and processing workflow to make the content of each page searchable. You can view the automatically generated text below as well as copy and paste individual pieces of text to quote in your own work.
Text recognition is never 100% accurate. Many parts of the scanned page may not be reflected in the OCR text output, including: images, page layout, certain fonts or handwriting.
THE FILM SINCE THEN
became his willing accomplices. He seems to have aspired to become a second Goldwyn, relying on quality alone. The studios which arose, it is said, with Prudential's money at Denham were intended to be an international Mecca, a rosegarden colony to which the gifted of all the earth would repair, and out of which were to come films which had to be great because so many admirable people from so many countries were connected with them. Among the flashing names that decorated the Korda diadem were : Jacques Feyder, Rene Clair, Josef von Sternberg, William K. Howard, Marlene Dietrich, H. G. Wells, Paul Robeson, Leslie Howard, Lothar Mendes, Laurence Olivier, Erich Pommer, William Cameron Menzies, Elizabeth Bergner, while even Winston Churchill, then in the political wilderness, wrote some scripts and Sir Robert Vansittart some lyrics. Such a galaxy of talent was expensive, and so were the super-productions which surrounded it. Catherine the Great, Sanders of the River, The Scarlet Pimpernel, The Ghost Goes West, Fire Over England, Knight Without Armour, The Thief of Bagdad, The Four Feathers, The Drum, and the abortive /, Claudius, were some of them, each far more costly than their prototype Henry VIII. Returns, on the other hand, were slow and meagre compared with the Henry VIII bonanza. Nevertheless, the financiers proved sympathetic for a while longer. The American market was believed to be the key to all, and Korda's purchase of shares in and election to the board of United Artists was presumably thought to be sure-fire insurance of ultimate commercial success.
From 1932 onwards, a steady stream of pictures had also been issuing from the newly-reorganised Gaumont-British Picture Corporation, under Michael Balcon's producership, of which we may remember the successful Rome Express, Friday the Thirteenth, Jew Suss, Rhodes of Africa, Evergreen, Little Friend and the thrillers of Alfred Hitchcock following on his early success in The Lodger. Only the latter films, such as The Thirty-Nine Steps and The Man Who Knew Too Much, forerunners of Hitchcock's later
548