When electrician Walter Haselbuch saw two men waving red-bulbed flashlights at the intersection of Jefferson Blvd. and Harcourt Ave., he assumed they were police officers, perhaps operating one of the LAPD's celebrated (and ACLU-defying) crime-stopping blockades. But when he pulled over, the men robbed him of $186 in cash, a $150 watch and a ring valued at $1700.
Suggested listening for prospective flashlight bandits: Waiting for the Electrician Or Someone Like Him (Firesign Theater)
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Film Depicts
Tense Drama
of Palestine
Youthful Producers
Brave Dangers to
Shoot Picture on Spot
Hollywood producers who decry the lack of strong, dramatic stories for the screen might borrow a leaf from the book of experiences of Herbert Kline, youthful producer, who picks the story ideas for his films straight out of today’s headlines.
Kline arrived in Hollywood a few weeks ago with a highly dramatic picture, “My Father’s House,” filmed completely in the Holy Land by himself and Meyer Levin, novelist. A little more than a year ago, Kline and Levin decided Palestine would be headline news for some time to come and would furnish excellent material for an exciting film.
To them the thought was father to the project. With Floyd Crosby, cameraman, and David Scot, sound engineer, they journeyed to the historical and classical name places of the Bible, from Dan to Beersheba and made their film against these ancient backgrounds.
Difficulties Met
Once in Palestine, Levin, who wrote the original screenplay, proceeded to create a story that told of the search of a refugee Polish boy for his family and took the company to every far corner of the Holy Land.
The trials and hardships of making a movie under civil war conditions would have daunted less hardy spirits. Their equipment was badly damaged, for example, when the King David Hotel was blown up by terrorists and their office was a bare 30 yards distant.
Production was again held up on the film when the only truck the producers possessed was stolen along with their driver and used by the Palestine underground to kidnap British officers in Jerusalem. Arab terrorists refused for weeks to permit them to shoot street scenes in the Holy City and when it was finally accomplished it was done with the speed of a commando raid to avoid attacks from the hostile Arabs.
Kline has built a career upon such hard-to-film movies of social import. He shot “Heart of Spain” in the Spanish civil war, “Crisis” during Czechoslovakia’s tragic days in 1937 and “Lights Out in Europe" (to a James Hilton script) as Poland fell to the Nazis. John Steinbeck provided the script for Kline’s Mexican film, “Forgotten Village.”
--Herbert Kline died in Los Angeles in 1999.
www.lmharnisch.com
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