Screenland (Jan–Jun 1948)

leading authorities on New Zealand history and Maori life, flew from New Zealand to Hollywood to act as technical advisor. Throughout the preparation and shooting of the picture, Captain Bennett and I were in daily conference, and this once again required me to leap madly around to the sets or stages, because Captain Bennett had to be standing beside the camera for every inch of film so that no technical mistakes would be made. Very few people realize the amount of film a producer has to look at. Scores of tests are made of all characters in all makeups and hairdresses and costumes, because you cannot judge by your own eye. You must judge only by the celluloid eye of the camera. You run down to the projection room a dozen times a day for this purpose, in addition to your morning visit where you look at all the film that was shot the day before. Then when the film is finished, you spend five Zachary Scott seems to approve discipline Cene Anderson is giving son Bobby. It happened on Eagle Lion's "Prelude to Night" set. and six hours a day in the projection and cutting room, running the film and conferring with your film editors as to the proper editing and arranging of it. Since shooting stopped, I have seen "Green Dolphin Street" complete from beginning to end 108 times. Before choosing locations, you screen hundreds of reels of locations that have been already "located" and filed for such inspection, film of which is kept filed in a library. For "Green Dolphin Street" we tore that library apart and couldn't find what we wanted, so we went out in airplances and flew 12,000 miles in various directions before we found the big trees that we wanted. Our big tree location on the Klamath River in Northern California was more than a thousand miles away from the studio, and this distance was not easily negotiated. You took a plane to San Francisco, a bus to somewhere else, then another bus to somewhere else, and then a bulldozer. The bulldozer is no exaggeration because actually, at first, we were forced to follow two bulldozers to get into the location. At that, we had to build our living camp t wen t% miles away. Other locations took us to Monterey, several miles away, to Laguna, quite a few miles south, and to two other spots on the Pacific Coast unidentifiable by any town names because they aren't near any towns. It might interest you to know that the cave, which really doesn't exist, is in real life composed of three different sections — one at Monterey, one at Laguna, and the other here at the studio. The one shot of the water tearing into the cave that sends Donna Reed climbing up the rocks — because if she doesn't climb she'll be drowned — we did three different times with three different caves, and each one of them meant the staff operating on a platform 35 feet in the air, so that we at least would be clear of the machinery and water. Try climbing a 35-foot ladder a dozen times in a morning. Meanwhile, the largest set of its type ever built by MGM, the harbor and waterfront of St. Pierre in the English' Channel, was being built on Lot 3. Even with all the drawings approved, even with meticulous study and changes in a miniature model of the set, you still make changes almost daily as you see the set go up. And while primarily such changes are the responsibility of the director, the co-operation between director and producer was such, in this instance, that repeatedly during the shooting of the picture, Mr. Saville and I would steal a ten-minute lunch, and use the rest of the legal lunch hour to go climbing over waterfronts, up and down rocks, in and out of huge lumber barges, and through ships, and up rigging, and under the earth, and over great prostrate tree trunks ten feet in diameter. Then there was the job of planning and achieving the specially invented tidal wave effect which required six 1500horse power Allison airplane motors, purchased from government surplus, which were on the far end of Lot 2. Not many times in my life have I been in such a precarious position as while watching mechanical rehearsals of the giant wave that wrecks William's lumber barge. We were way up in the air on a platform with no railing, clinging to the legs of the camera that was chained down, and wondering whether or not we would be washed away when Richard Hart was. He was supposed to be. I wasn't. We were all in rubber boots and oilskins. The special assistant in charge of rubber boots had a big job on "Green Dolphin Street" because set after set required director, crew, cast, and even the poor producer to move constantly in and out of water. Once your picture starts shooting, of course, you have to watch its actual dramatic progress, as well as the further preparation of future sets, costumes, props, and effects. You are liable to have 25 or 30 big and important sets scattered around Lots 1, 2, and 3 of MGM. These areas total a couple of hundred acres. Stage 30 must be nearly a half mile from my office. It's about five miles to Lot 3. And while in theory you are supposed to send for an automobile and be driven out to the stage or location, in practice you are generally en route from one to the other. Most of the time you walk — a good deal of the time you run. Everything is always in a hurry in a studio. Time is the costliest thing we deal in. Silly things come up. Would a girl of wealth and family position, who wore high-heeled shoes in her home on an English Channel Island in the 18th Century still wear such shoes later as a pioneer housewife in the New Zealand timber country? Would a woman always proud of her immaculate appearance change the doing of her hair in a different land? Lest there be any adverse comment on the effective way Lana Turner's hair is arranged, even in the Green Dolphin Street "out-back country," investigation proved that our great-grandmothers, in cities or elsewhere, used hair styles of the day, forced on them by the fulsome long locks, and were never free to use the carebss, informal hairdo's that came into fashion when women bobbed their hair, shortening their responsibilities and lengthening their liberties. Lana Turner is depicted as the daughter of very rich people. She imports her clothes, perfumes and so on from Paris to her Channel Island home. So, closely following the book, we were able to establish that young lady as arriving in the pioneer country of New Zealand with elaborate trunks and cases filled with materials which she had brought in the determination to make her new home at least comfortable and attractive, and her own person as meticulous in stylishness as circumstances would possibly permit. Various other shipments are shown as arriving (remember, her father was a great shipping magnate) , permitting us to justify the fact that she could be dressed in a manner well suiting her own important self-respect and emphatic personal pride. The very first thing she did on arriving at her bridegroom's primitive home was to start fixing up the place with fabrics, etc. Once the destructive earthquake was over, she immediately found undamaged trunks and started hauling out materials with which to restore the battered home and refreshen her damaged wardrobe. The problem that involved Donna Reed most importantly was the question of her spectacular climb up the rocks in the cave, when the rising tide imprisons her and threatens to drown her. The question arose as to how far a girl in the elaborate and cumbersome dress of the period would be able to climb up that precipitous rock wall, and how much damage would be done to her person and her costume. The final conclusion, to which everybody subscribed, was that the girl of that day was accustomed to the so-called handicap of that clothing, and that it was probably not nearly as much of a handicap to her as it would be to the girl of today who, to put it mildly, is used to wearing considerably fewer clothes; and that in desperation and to save her life, the girl of a hundred years ago could accomplish incredible physical achievements with all the thick, full skirts and petticoats and even corsets, as has been proved by several immortal heroines of history. Then came up the small, delicate Screen land 61