Cinema: Goldwyn’s Filipinos

Cats may look at kings, but extras rarely criticize producers. Recently, however, Manila’s Philippines Free Press carried a disturbing communication from one of the 1,000 members of Los Angeles’ Filipino colony who have been working on Producer Samuel Goldwyn’s $2,000,000 epic of the Philippine pacification, The Real Glory. “This Hollywood idea,” railed Mr. Goldwyn’s Filipino, “of 60 Filipino soldiers being made to cower and shrink by one Juramentado [a Moro fanatic who expects heavenly reward in proportion to the number of Christians he kills] appears to some of us to thoroughly disparage the character of Filipino soldiers as a whole. . . . That this couldn’t have happened, no matter how untrained they were, is the belief of many extras. …”

Swagger little President Manuel Quezon last week lodged formal protest against such a portrait of Philippine character through his Resident Commissioner Joaquin (“Mike”) Elizalde, who emplaned from Washington for California to talk to Mr. Goldwyn. Upshot: for Producer Goldwyn, another well-publicized tribulation; for Commissioner Elizalde, an invitation to attend, with Goldwyn Executive James Roosevelt, the preview of The Real Glory, in which Filipinos will continue to cower.