Lagoon Unit

Climate Unkind to Blue Lagoon Unit

mHE correspondent who wrote to “Tro- JL picalities” column a few months ago and predicted that there would be many Blue Lagoon blues including prickly-heat and sunburn before the picture was finished, can now say “I told you so.”

The J. Arthur Rank film is being partly made in the Yasawa Group, Fiji.

Work started there in January, after a publicity build-up in Australia. Austra lian newspapers, who have been follow ing the production with great enthusiasm, reported in early February that work was not going to schedule because many of the cast were incapacitated through sickness and injury most of it through ill-considered exposure to Fiji’s unpleas ant summer climate. One man was re ported to have poisoned feet, through walking on a reef.

The location was chosen last July that is, during that period of the year which corresponds to the Southern winter, and when conditions in Fiji are very pleasant. Conditions in Fiji during

the months corresponding to the South ern summer, however, are exceedingly unpleasant and, at that time of the year, even hardened local residents refrain from spending 12 hours of each day upon the beaches, as the Blue Lagoon players are reported to have done.

Bringing English men and women by air from an English winter straight into a Fiji summer was a piece of bad organi sation. Whoever was responsible was ex ceedingly ill-advised.

The film unit has not been lucky in Fiji. Shortly after they arrived, the two stars, Jean Simmons and Donald Hous ton, were involved in a car accident.

Later, the plane which was carrying Mr.

Leslie Gilliat, the location manager, crashed into a stream in the mountains behind Suva.

Neither the stars nor Mr. Gilliat was injured.