| Dear Gigi
Thank you for your Newsletter. It is so pleasing that Toy Theatre is
taking off in the States, alas I am not on the Network as yet but we do
have a share in a UNIMA, BPMTTG and Puppet Centre Web Site as you can see
from our News letter herewith. I was so pleased that you enjoyed the Garden
Of Allah, a forgotten masterpiece of the cinema. During the war (1939-1945)
the cinemas were allowed to stay open nearly all day including Sunday and
so a great many older films were reissued to fill the performances and
it was during one of these shows during an air raid that I saw this wonderful
film at the age of 10. Germans or no Germans I stuck to my seat instead
of going to the shelter, this could have been my only chance of seeing
it. It always remained in my memory because of the wonderful sets for which
it gained an Academy Award and the outstanding music score by Max Steiner.
The dancing girl was Tilly Losch who performed with Kurt Weill and Brecht
and was then on the run from Hitler. The film made a star of Charles Boyer
in America who was up to then a little known and failed actor in France.
The film was the first film to be processed in 3 colour Technicolour, the
2 colour process having been in use since the 1920's ( mainly with Douglas
Fairbanks Snr. ) and an effort was |
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made to create images that are really animated paintings. The script is
tight with no surplus words, so as to strengthen the ultimate tragedy and
the many closeups with shadows playing on well defined heads draws us sympathetically
towards the players. Robert Hichens the author of the original very successful
novel ( 1907 ) dramatised it for the stage and it ran at the Haymarket
Theatre in London in 1911 with Godfrey Tearle. It had been made into two
films already before the 1936 film. Firstly in 1917 with Tom Santchi and
Helen Ware and again in 1927 with Ivan Petrovich and Alice Terry. Joseph
Schildkraut as Batiste the servant later made his name as Dreyfus in the
film of 1938.
Marlene Deitrich had made two previous desert romances, Morroco with
Gary Cooper (1930) and Blonde Venus (1933) with Cary Grant. Her face was
drastically remodelled for TGOA in order to cast a greater shadow in the
hollow of her cheeks and she made sure that in all her films from then
on she controlled the cameras. Boyer and Basil Rathbone did not need to
suffer in this way for their art having well moulded heads. Robert Hichens
later wrote The Paradine Case novel itself made into a sucessful film with
Gregory Peck and Ingrid Bergman.
I hope this has been of interest to you and that you will have a second
viewing of TGOA sometime, it deserves it. If you come to London this year
I hope we can meet you and discuss Toy Theatre. Al the moment we are planning
some things for March since we normally go to the Toy Theatre Symposium
in Germany about this time but lets hope for the best.
All the best from Leicester
Peter and Sylvia Peasgood
I give you herewith the
article
I wrote about the Ramsgate
Festival which will appear in the next UNIMA Bulletin.
