Sometimes one wonders. how soon will the British studios, as a whole, catch on to the idea that the film series is popular? On economic grounds alone something of the kind might well be considered writes C.A. Lejeune to the "Sunday Observer."
And, principally, I should like to see some English variation of the Jones Family series, dedicated to the ordinary doings of ordinary people in ordinary houses. We can ai think, I am sure, of plenty of actors and actresses who are ordinary enough to make the series thoroughly realist, Many a time, however, one feels, the employment of contract artists, technical men end writers on some modestly popular series might profitably solve the interim problem of overhead charges. The Americans, presumably, have not made a practice of these things for fun.
Even in production on a larger scale there is nothing so very humiliating, after all, about a series. Great works of art, admittedly, come singly, but then we are not talking about art, but motion pictures. It is not beyond ihe bounds of reason to imagine, for instance, Charles Laughton as an Fnglish Charlie Chan. George Arliss as a ministerial Mr. More, Anna Neagle as a Sophie Long of the sub-Vrbs, in cycles that would combine excitement with a considerable amount of authority I should like, mysell, to see Rex Harrison cast as Campion in the whole brilliant series of Margery Allingham stories, I should like to see Ralph Richardson Soames Forsyte, Edmund Gwenn as H. C.
Bailey's Mr. Clunk, and Robert Donat, star of Steps." in all the other romances about Richard F
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.