Blue Lagoon Blues

Can Anyone Supply a Beach Like This?

TWO gentlemen—Mr. Leslie Gilliat and Mr. S. Sayer—connected with the J.

Arthur Rank group of picture pro ducers, are in Fiji at present looking for a blue lagoon. Anyone who has one is asked to communicate with the Fiji Public Rela tions office, which judging by the rather urgent appeal in its bulletin of March 18, is having trouble in satisfying the movie makers.

No ordinary lagoon will do: What is re quired is “a horse-shoe shaped bay with an entrance not more than half a mile wide. The bay should face the north and opposite the entrance there should be a coral reef broken by a passage. On the inner edge of the bay there must be a beach of white sand, lined with coconut palms. Behind the beach the ground must rise fairly sharply to a height of several hundred feet. Finally, there must be no houses or any other signs of human habi tation visible along the shore.”

Somewhere along the Sigatoka coast seems the obvious locality—Sovi Bay?

Cuvu? But, presumably, this does not come up to the specification laid down by Messrs. Gilliat and Sayer, who insist on the right background for their project— that is, filming H. de Vere Stacpoole’s Blue Lagoon which is scheduled for pro duction this year.

Blue Lagoon was, in its day, considered a highly daring piece of fiction. It told the story of innocent “lurv”—the story of two children (male and female) who. washed up on the shores of a beautiful but fertile (and deserted) island in the Pacific, with nothing but their instincts, got along together very well. One day, when the girl-child was about 15, she went

away into the jungle and, feeling drowsy, went to sleep. When she awoke, there was a baby; just like that.

She took it along to the boy-child.

“Where did you get that?’’ said he. “In the bull-rushes at the bottom of the garden,” replied she.

At the age of 13, I was solemnly warned off Blue Lagoon, it being considered un fit for the eyes of one of such tender years.

But when the family were elsewhere em ployed I did it over; and, although div erted, was highly mystified. Those were the days when “the facts of life” were represented in books by neat little as terisks.

But it seemed to me, even then, an ad mirable method of carrying on the race.

None of the fuss, fur and feathers such as were associated with child-birth in my home-village. Just sleep it off; and with very satisfying results. On maturer reflection I think Mr. Stacpoole had a lot to learn about parturition among primitives—a theory upon which he ap parently hung his story.

There was a sequel to Blue Lagoon the story of the offspring of the boy and girl innocents. In the course of this narrative, offspring and his girl-friend, a beautiful island maid, become involved in a full-blown tribal war. However the ingenious Mr. Stacpoole settles this problem satisfactorily by having the op posing, savage tribesmen arranged respec tively at the top of a steep hill and at the bottom of same. At the given moment each side charges, with spears at the ready. Result: each impales the other and exit savage tribesmen. Innocent bliss reigns supreme once more. JT.

Mr. D. R. McDonald, formerly of the legal service in Fiji, and the Solomon Islands, and for the last 10 years in East Africa, is visiting Brisbane on leave.