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EDITORIAL note: the author of this amazing article modestly omits what we believe to be an important fact in connection with the filming of episodes in the life of one of the world's great men — namely, that Mr. Hullinger's trip to Italy to make "The Private Life of Mussolini" was conducted entirely on an unofficial basis. Yet, with no formal entree into government inner circles, he was successful in obtaining the right to film the first complete screen biography ever made of II Duce. A remarkable motion picture resulted, highlights of which are presented here.
BENITO MUSSOLINI is a movie star.
He has just completed his first picture, taking the part of himself in a feature pictorializing his private life.
To his already widely diversified roles of dictator of Italy, holder of many cabinet portfolios, journalist, playwright and aviator, he has now added that of leading man on the screen.
c/uce/7 Presenting the headaches and high lights in filming the private life of Italy's Public Hero No. 1
BY EDWIN WARE HULLINGER
Along with Clark Gable and William Powell, he is an "attraction" among the flickering marquee lights above the box office.
I have just returned from Italy and from producing this picture, the first screen biography, I believe, ever made of a living world statesman.
For years he has been an ardent picture fan (Mussolini's enthusiasm for movies is common talk in Europe; he personally censors all the newsreels produced in Italy) but not until now has II Duce consented to step before the kleig lights and submit himself to one of the most exacting of all tests, the test of the screen.
HOW, I have been asked, did he handle himself during the "shootings"? In comparison with his professional screen colleagues, how did he "do his stuff"? I never have produced a film of William
Powell, but, as a writer in Hollywood, I often watched America's leading screen stars at work on the sets.
In some ways, making a picture JA of a dictator is just like making
^tfjk any other picture. You use cam
eras and microphones and artificial lights. You have your leading man. That's where the difference begins.
Dictators — or at least this dictator — do not care to be dictated to. That meant, for one thing, that direction from behind the cameras was taboo. You could not shout "Cut!" and bully Mussolini into "doing his lines over." Once the shooting of a scene began, it plunged forward to its finale without control. All the control you had was your arrangements in advance and, of course, your scissors when you saw the "rushes." You had to gamble on what took place between times. You got the scene set in (Continued on page 87)
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