Mervyn LeRoy, Sean Connery and Nazi Titanic

Over the weekend I caught up with The Directors series on Mervyn Le Roy, watched a tribute to Sean Connery on his 85th birthday and a documentary on a Goebbels-backed film on the Titanic.

I suspect  that Mervyn LeRoy is a name with which you are unfamiliar.

He made Little Caesar and Fugitive from the Chain Gang.  

He also was involved in many a fine musical like Wizard of Oz.  

He deserves to be better remembered

You do not have to be movie buff to have your favourite stars and dislikes.

Paul Muni who starred in Fugitive from the Chain Gang was my father’s favourite actor along with Van Heflin.

Mine might be Humphrey Bogart or Leslie Caron.

One actor whom I thought overrated is Sean Connery.

True he was the definitive James Bond but these films, few in number, were made early  in his career.

I never saw another film in which he starred which I liked or appreciated.

This tribute was very much Scots-orientated with contributions from Jackie Stewart and Andy Murray as well as Scottish actors.

Sean Connery however lives in the Bahamas.

Finally Nazi Titanic.

This two hour documentary broadcast last night on SKY HISTORY told the true story of how in 1940 Joseph  Goebbels authorised the making of a film about the Titanic to illustrate Britain as corrupt and inept.

He chose director Herbert Sempel and gave him a huge budget – in today’s money £100m

Even when the war was turning against the Nazis, with resources stretched, Goebbels sanctioned the use of a ship and soldiers as extras.

However Sempel was arrested and found hanging in his cell after making derogatory Nazi remarks which his scriptwriter referred to the Gestapo.

The film was never shown at the time in Germany though it was in countries they occupied.

The excerpts shown were pretty dire and did not bear comparison to Hollywood’s war efforts like The Great Dictator, Casablanca or the British Went The Day Well when the young Thora Hird took on the Nazis in a sleepy village they took over.

I do not believe either Winston Churchill or Franklin D Roosevelt were movie buffs but Goebbels and Hitler were great admirers of the English-speaking cinema, as was Stalin who – like Goebbels -had his own private cinema where he could watch one of his favourite films Stagecoach.