Story Of "Tabu”

How a Film Was Made on Borabora

From Our Own Correspondent.

PAPEETE, November 25.

THE latest reviews from America and Europe indicate that the film, “Tabu,” is proving a big success, both financially and artistically, and appears to be quite the best South Sea picture so far put upon the screen.

The late Mr. Murnau spent more than a year in the Society Group in connection with this production, and collaborated with Mr. Bob Flaherty.

The latter had already made a name for himself in Samoa, where he produced “Moana,” a picture of great artistic merit but too high-class to appeal to the great masses who bring in the dollars.

In “Tabu,” Murnau and Flaherty between them appear to have hit the happy medium.

Most of “Tabu” was filmed in Bora bora, an island situated some 150 miles north-west of Tahiti, and which holds

every variety of island scenery within its encircling reef.

Borabora has always been a favourite stopping place for British men-of-war visiting the Society Group, before proceeding to the main port of Papeete.

Here one finds the typical atoll formation of low wooded islets along the outer reef, an easy passage leading to a navigable lagoon, and the jagged peaks of a real volcanic island sticking up in the centre of it.

Murnau’s main camp was built on the atoll, which ensured the greatest degree of isolation and absence of unwanted spectators from the settlements who have a weakness for getting in the way of the camera at unpropitious moments.

Somewhere on Borabora to-day.

Matahi, the leading man in “Tabu,” plants his sweet potatoes and tends his vanilla vines, all unconscious of the fame he has acquired, and probably all the happier for his ignorance.

The heroine, however, “Here,” other wise known as Anna Chevalier, departed some months ago to follow on the trail of the picture she had played in, and got a job in Ziegfield’s Follies, New York. She is still there, from all accounts, and her picture, in the latest mode, frequently adorns the front page of illustrated theatrical publications.

Flaherty is in Hollywood, planning another masterpiece.