HOLLYWOOD A Take to Remember
Hunting last summer for a ship to sink, Movie Producer Andrew (Cry Tenor) Stone was no more successful than the average iceberg. He combed the shipyards of Europe trying to find the chief prop for a new film called The Last Voyage, gave up in discouragement and sailed for home. At sea a day or so later, he looked over the water and saw a twin-stack, 44,000-ton liner slicing her way west at 23 knots. “That’s the one,” cried Stone. “I want her.”
The ship he wanted was the Ile de France, the French Line’s “Rue de la Paix of the Atlantic,” winner of the Croix de guerre for service as a troopship during World War II. Stone got her, and last week he was ready to sink her.
French Line retired the 31-year-old Ile de France last autumn, sold her to a Japanese scrap merchant named Seichi Okada, who for the last few weeks has been collecting $4,000 a day in rent from Andy Stone and MGM. Finally, on location last week in Osaka Bay, the Ile reverberated with strange commands, such as “Open the barndoors on the broads!”* In the first-class staterooms, a collection of extras as mixed as the strays in a Conrad novel—English girls from Kobe, White Russians, Poles, wives of U.S. marines, a French judo expert—had the maritime of their lives and drew $10 a day. As the cameras rolled, Realist Stone pushed his 101 performers (including George Sanders, Edmond O’Brien, Robert Stack) through the paces of disaster. A grand piano plunged into the ship’s chapel through a 12-ft. hole in the deck of the grand salon; Actress Dorothy Malone was trapped between sheets of boiler plate in a cabin awash with icy brine. Explosions were set off in the engine room, where a half acre of paintwork unexpectedly ignited and 30-ft. flames threatened all hands.
Meanwhile, keeping an agreement with the French government, Writer-Producer-Director Stone had removed the name Ile de France from every part of the ship, repainted the name Olympus on lifeboats, life rings, prow and stern. Promptly the Greek Line, which has a ship called Olympia, threatened suit. More paint. This week, if all goes according to schedule the Ile de France, her three forward compartments flooded with 7,000 tons of Osaka Bay, will aim her four great screws and the new name Claridon into the wide, wide lenses in the sky.
*Barndoor: an attachment for theatrical lights that helps concentrate the beam. Broad: a type of floodlight.
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