J. Arthur Rank Puts Back the Clock 2,000 Years

IN preparation for the filming of a romantic story of the old days in New Zealand, the J. Arthur Rank organisation some time ago sent a team of talent scouts to the Dominion to select their heroine.

In mid-October they announced their selection—a Dutch-Javanese girl who had never set eyes on the Land of the Long Daylight In all of New Zealand, Mr. Rank could not discover one Maori girl up to his box-office specifications. What the Maori girls think about the decision is better left unsaid, but there may be trouble when glamorous Miss Lay a Raka and the film team arnves to film “The Seekers.”

Ra £ g1 ’ °t Rotorua, who looked over the script, however, was

not at all perturbed. The heroine, she said, was a chief’s wife who was supposed to flirt with a pakeha sailor. As a chief’s wife, said Rangi. it would have been as much as her life was worth to so much as raise her eyes to another man. 0 . . , v. Several Photographs of Miss Raka save5 ave a PPeared in Australian papers, S £V s , sbowl l m , a reed skirt and * a £ looks to be a brassiere of feath ers: She is executing what a PPears to be a hula, and shows f great deal of shapely bare leg, from about the waist down, But back in your boxes, you ethnological critics—the Polynesi ans are supposed to have come originally from Indonesia, anyhow.