Will Wasp
There is plainly a need for some sort of central subject register in the film business — for even the unlikeliest subjects, once in the public domairt, are apt to be taken up simultaneously by different producers. As, for instance, The Count of Monte Cristo, which, though you and I may think that yet another re-make of the old Dumas swashbuckler is the last thing the ailing cinema needs, is apparently on the urgent schedules of two companies. Both, furthermore, are due to be made in Rome, Whither both Richard Chamberlain and Tony Curtis will shortly depart, each to play the Count.
Temporary exit?
The Earl of Drogheda, who relinquishes the chairmanship of the board of the Royal Opera House this week, handing over to Sir Claus Moser after nearly sixteen years, is going out in clouds of glory. Quite apart from Wednesday's Royal Gala at Covent Garden — with a roll-call of the Garden's most illustrious opera and ballet stars on the stage, Solti and Davis in the pit, and the Queen Mother, Princess Margaret and Messrs Wilson, Heath and Thorpe in the audience — the newspapers are paying lavish tribute, rallying to sing the praises of the man who is also, of course, chairman of the Financial Times.
But is he, in fact, actually going? For some time there has been much inspired lobbying designed to ensure that the noble lord, though no longer chairman, is not long absent from the higher councils of the Opera House.
All or nothing
However long the BBC's troubles with its striking production assis tents may persist, be assured that The Pallisers will eventually be completed — though the cost of reassembling and recontracting the players involved in the missing episodes will be staggering. The reason is that the Beeb has deals to sell the series overseas (including, most lucratively, the US) and those deals depend on there being the full twenty-six episodes.
Previous page
