Four on Location

A long time ago, wide-eyed youths were encouraged to join the Navy to see the world. But that idea is in Grandad Village now. The kind of crew to join today is a film crew. Of course, life on location is often a little out of focus.

sbNear Dublin, the cast, crew, director, scenarists, and flacks connected with filming Somerset Maugham's Of Human Bondage have been behaving as if they were making another version of the offscreen Cleopatra. Soon after shooting began a couple of months ago, Roderick Mann of London's Sunday Express arrived for an exclusive interview with Kim Novak--and that's what he got. He stopped taking notes and started holding hands with her at the races. "This is a very personal thing between Roddy and me," Kim tells Roddy's competitors. Meanwhile. Director Henry Hathaway. 65, was telling Novak that she was "a silly bitch" and "a stupid cow." Novak went off to London and hid from reporters in her own reporter's pad. Hathaway quit. Actor-Scriptwriter Bryan Forbes quit, too. Laurence Harvey, who plays the young Maugham in the transparently autobiographical story, tried unsuccessfully to buy his way out, then went off to St. Jean-Cap-Ferrat to talk it over with the original Maugham. The two got along splendidly, so Harvey returned to Dublin with new faith in his high destiny. The producer hired a new director (Ken Hughes), Novak was coaxed back to Ireland, where she calls up Roddy Mann every other hour. With enough humans back in bondage, shooting of the film has begun again.

sbIn the Drakensberg Mountains of South Africa, a crew financed by mighty Joe Levine is making Zulu. It concerns an incident which was a kind of Alamo in reverse--on Jan. 22, 1879, some 130 British soldiers stationed at a remote mission called Rorke's Drift successfully withstood an attack by 4,000 Zulus. The South African government, eager to see new Hollywoods springing up out of the veld, is earnestly cooperating. It has supplied soldiers, giraffes, prop men, leopards, spears--everything but phalaropes. Director Cy Enfield also called on Dinizulu, paramount chief of the Zulus, and Dinizulu came through with 4,000 of his finest, plus a faultless selection of his most nubile maidens for a bare-breasted scene in which the Zulu warriors on the eve of battle are given the sort of sendoff that might well cause 4,000 men to lose to 130. The Zulus are cocky, freewheeling, and flamboyantly natural actors. They seem content with their basic $17 a month. They charge in sweating, shining waves with rawhide shields and high-borne spears. They all but shout to one another. "Don't fire until you see the whites.'' At night, to keep them out of mischief, the producers show them movies.

sbIn Manhattan, Playwright Dore Schary is directing a film version of Act One, the autobiography of Schary's old friend, the late Moss Hart. George Hamilton is playing young Moss; Jason Robards Jr. is Hart's lifelong collaborator George S. Kaufman, with whom Hart wrote The Man Who Came to Dinner. Early in their relationship. Hart attended a memorable cocktail party full of Kaufman's flashing friends, people like Robert Benchley, Heywood Broun, Helen Hayes. To populate that party on film, Schary's casting directors sifted the city, trying to find just the right faces. In Bloomingdale's, for example, they found Helen Hayes. Her name is Virginia Goode. She is a model. She rubs Vicks Vapo-Rub into infants' chests in television commercials. They spotted Robert Benchley walking briskly through Rockefeller Center, but the man was not amused by his chance of a lifetime. "I am an investment banker," he said imperially. So the movie had to settle for Benchley's son, Nathaniel. In the Seventh Avenue garment district, they found Heywood Broun. His real name is Joe Dermer. He makes mink coats. When he arrived on the set, he tried to sell a full length natural to Schary. One guest after another, the party grew, with new Ethel Barrymores and new Katharine Cornells emerging from every other subway car. Last week, Schary shot the scene. It was a meltproof Madame Tussaud's.

sbIan Fleming's From Russia, With Love is being shot in Istanbul. The essential plot can be summarized in a few words: the Russians are trying to kill British Secret Agent James Bond. The other essential is lissome Daniela Bianchi, once a Miss Universe runner-up and now a Russian agent getting ready to lift her iron skirt and defect for the love of Bond. Turkish crowds are so interested in following the progress of the shooting that they have nearly choked it dead. They pay no attention when asked to keep quiet, and even swarm in front of the cameras. To get some scenes shot, Director Terence Young has to stage noisy fake scenes near by, complete with wailing fire trucks and stunt men on high ledges, to decoy the Turks away from the real action. The crowds were even there one day at 3 a.m. last week to see Bond shoot a Russian coming out of Anita Ekberg's mouth. Ya. ya--her mouth. As in Boccaccio '70, Ekberg is featured on a huge outdoor advertising poster, this one plugging Ekberg and Bob Hope in Call Me Bwana, which happens to have been made by the producers of the Bond film. Her mouth is a trap door. The Russian crawls out and gets a lead filling. Bond is again played by Actor Sean Connery. Author Fleming all but hand-picked him for his Bondish scar on one cheek and his dark, tough, and handsome looks. The two of them sit around between takes sipping viscous coffee and devising fresh ways to avoid paying taxes. Connery says he won't continue to play Bond for more than seven years because he is afraid of getting typed.

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