The Times (16/Aug/1938) - Kipling and the Screen: a film of "Gunga Din"
(c) The Times (16/Aug/1938)
- keywords: Alfred Hitchcock, Ben Hecht, Cary Grant, Dame May Whitty, Ethel Lina White, Gaumont British Picture Corporation Limited, Joan Fontaine, Margaret Lockwood, Michael Redgrave, New York City, New York, Paul Lukas, Sabotage (1936), The 39 Steps (1935), The Lady Vanishes (1938)
KIPLING AND THE SCREEN
A FILM OF "GUNGA DIN"
In Kipling the film would appear, to have, found a writer whose stories readily lend themselves to adaptation. Hollywood has already turned to good account "Captains Courageous," and Mr. Alexander Korda, in "Toomai of the Elephants," discovered a story well suited to the directorial talents of Mr. Robert Flaherty. A month or two ago Mr. Korda purchased the film rights of the Mowgli stories, and Sabu, the young Hindu boy actor, has already been chosen to play the part of Mowgli. It is the intention of the makers to allow the animals which played so important a part, in the upbringing of Mowgli in the jungle to talk as they did in the book.
The film version of "Gunga Din" will be made by the Radio Picture Corporation of America, and the production is expected to cost more than £400,000. Mr. Ben Hecht and Mr. Charles MacArthur, whose collaboration in the past has provided the cinema with some excellent descriptive dialogue, have written the scenario based on the ballad. Mr. Sam Jaffe, who was the aged lama in Lost Horizon, will be Gunga Din, and others in the cast will be Mr. Victor McLaglen, Mr. Cary Grant, and Miss Joan Fontaine. The scenes will include a frontier town near the Khyber Pass, a Hindu temple, and a native village.
Mr. Henry Hathaway, who directed The Lives of a Bengal Lancer, is to direct Mr. Gary Cooper in The Last Frontier, a story of the American army which occupied the Philippine Islands after the Spanish-American war. Miss Norma Shearer, whose new film, Marie Antoinette, was shown in New York last night, is to play the leading part in a modern comedy to be directed by Mr. Clarence Brown, whose felicitous touch in the film version of Ah! Wilderness preserved much of Mr. Eugene O'Neill's poetry. Another American film shortly to go into production is A Christmas Carol, adapted from Charles Dickens's story. Mr. Lionel Barrymore is to have the part of Scrooge, and Mr. Terry Kilburn, son of a London bus conductor, will be Tiny Tim.
Mr. Alfred Hitchcock's film, The Lady Vanishes, based on a story by Miss Ethel Lina White entitled "The Wheel Spins," will be the first Gaumont-British film to be released in this country by the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Corporation. It describes the adventures of several passengers besieged in a train in the Balkans. There is a spy to be caught, and Mr. Hitchcock, in Sabotage and The Thirty-nine Steps, has already shown how a story of espionage may provide the maximum amount of excitement, provided the proper atmosphere is built up. Miss Margaret Lockwood, Mr. Michael Redgrave, Dame May Whitty, and Mr. Paul Lukas are in the cast.
