World Film and Television Progress (1937-1938)

OF LONDON & HOLLYWOOD by Herman G. Weinberg reasons to work on Bezhin Meadow, which he has almost completed now. An announcement once appeared that Paul Muni would play Nijinsky, in a film based on the life of the Russian dancer, with Charles Laughton as Diaghilev. This would have made a splendid film. What happened? "And more inconstant than the wind" Erich von Stroheim, director of Greed and The Merry Widow, recently stated that he would like to film his novel, Paprika. The answer was the role of a spy in a French film which he went abroad to make. Paprika would have served to rehabilitate the greatest directorial talent of our time, but movies never do the obvious thing, even when the obvious thing is right. "Loire wanted to make an anti-war comedy" "Laughton was to have made The Field of the Cloth of Gold" G. W. Pabst, director of Kameradschaft and The Beggar's Opera, wanted to do a film in Italy on Spartacus, the slave driver. Mussolini said "No!" Charlie Chaplin wanted to play Napoleon. So did Edward G. Robinson. Neither film was made. Peter Lorre bought the rights to that delightful anti-war comedy from the Czech, The Good Soldier Schweik, hoping that someone would film the story and let him play the title role which he could do superbly. No one in Hollywood was interested. Instead, Lorre is offered such insultingly stupid roles as Mad Love, Crack-Up, etc. Erich Wolf Korngold, the German composer, was brought to Hollywood by Warners to do the musical arrangement for Midsummer Night's Dream. When that was finished, he dreamed of doing a film on the life of Beethoven, with himself playing Beethoven. No one paid any attention to him. Edward G. Robinson was so vehement in also wanting to play Beethoven that he threatened to abrogate his contract if Warners didn't let him. They didn't let him. "Sport with the ever restless mind of man" Stokowski wanted to do a film on the life of Wagner, with himself as Wagner. He still wants to do it, but no one will back it. Instead, he is appearing in The Big Broadcast 0/1937. Jean Cocteau, the French poet, announced that he would do a new version of that old, silent shocker, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, which had all the aesthetes ga-ga a decade ago. Nothing came of it. Later, he and Chaplin promised to meet in Bali some day and do a film together. This will really be, as the boys in the back-room would say, "something!" if it ever happens, which it probably won't. Korda announced Field of the Cloth of Gold, with Maurice Chevalier, Charles Laughton and a host of distinguished players in an historical film romance in the grand man ner, but it was never made. For that matter, Universal once also announced that it would re-make The Hunchback of Notre Dame with Lon Chaney's role taken this time by Lorre. Another pipe-dream. A friend of mine, Roman Freulich, director of a few experimental shorts, spent a whole afternoon, once, telling me how he would make a film of Robinson Jeffer's poem, Roan Stallion. To those who are familiar with this poem, idealism can go no further. "Dreams are but interludes which fancy makes" And, as if to keep up the noble tradition of movies and roles that never happened but should have happened, just the other day Bette Davis, bless her heart, announced that she would take a big part in the forthcoming Warner Bros, film on the life of Zola — if they would give her the bit she was dying to do — Nana. " Pudovkin wanted to do Zola's Germinal. . ." 15