United Automobile Worker

Hollywood Makes Anti - Nazi Films
By JOHN R. CHAPLIN, Federated Press

HOLLYWOOD- The anti-Nazi trend in films is going on unabated. Confessions of a Nazi Spy is getting its first previews these days, and Warners are already planning a second anti-Hitler film.

This one will be called Boycott, and will be played by Alan Hale and Lya Lys. They will be a German-American couple who become involved in Bund activities.

And real newsreel shots of the famous Bund meeting in Madison Sq. Garden-so far suppressed in the U. S. although shown in England-will be included in the film.

Warners have a third one on the griddle, about a German concentration camp. And we can expect definite announcement of anti-Nazi pictures from other studios any day now.

20th Century-Fox has purchased rights to John Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath, the best-selling novel about California's migratory agricultural workers. Zanuck is reported to have paid $75,000 for it, getting it away from two other studios in spirited bidding. Of course, no one yet knows how this forthright study of the migratory workers' problems can be brought to the screen. But in such films as Cabin in the Cotton and As the Earth Turns, Zanuck showed that he had a definite feel for the earth.

And with today's spirit of more honest treatment of screen subjects, Grapes of Wrath may become an epic film drama.

Two ranking American novelists are now working in Hollywood--Sinclair Lewis is adapting his Angela Is 22, which he will co-produce and may act in, for a new independent firm. (Metro is preparing his It Can't Happen Here.)

And Theodore Dreiser is working with Dorian Otvos and D. A. Doran on a screen treatment of his classic, Sister Carrie. Harry Edington has taken an option on it and, if the story jells for films (and the Hays office okays it), he will produce it for Universal.

Bob Montgomery will make two films in England for MGM: The Earl of Chicago and Busman's Honeymoon. While across the water, he may be helpful in getting the British film actors more solidly organized. As you know, he's a past president of the Screen Actors Guild.