A Too Realistic Cinema Act The Italian cinema industry is a very flourishing one, and indeed one of the important industries of the country. Turin has long disputed with Rome which of the two cities should shelter the head offices and studios of the big cinema houses. The tendency now seems to be for the new firms to come to the capital. It is not difficult to see why this should be so. Few, if any, cities can offer such settings for film pictures as Rome. There are the ruins of Imperial Rome always at hand for the metteur en scene of historical pieces. Anyone who gets up early in the morning and has a~ little luck will not infrequently encounter a motor-car full of gladiators or ancient Romans or even some Cresar himself driving off to be filmed for the screen, a Rome correspondent writes.
The other day two gladiators" who were acting their parts in a new picture play of ancient Rome had an adventure with the lions which was not contemplated by the author of the piece. The scene was to be a Coliseum spectacle with gladiators fighting lions. Naturally the ticklish part of the business had to be done in a specially-prepared place. This was arranged to be carried out in a field with prepared ditches for the wild beasts. The lions, morphinized and accompanied by their trainer, were turned into a pit. Somehow or other, one of the gladiators accidentally fell into the pit. The drugged beasts did not do him much harm, though they managed to tear his arm a little and give him a good fright before the trainer could reduce them to submission.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.