Forgotten Silver Page #4

They demanded more money.

There was none to give.

With a heavy heart,

Colin McKenzie returned to his only

dependable source of finance.

Stan the Man finally pushed his luck

too far one day in Buller.

The day's shooting started normally

enough for Stan and Colin.

By lunchtime, Stan was hitting his stride.

But at 3:
30 that afternoon, Stan 'the Man'

Wilson was to learn a hard lesson.

Stan spots a fresh victim. A dignified-looking

gentleman standing alone with his wife.

Unfortunately, he fails to recognize Gordon

Coates, the Prime Minister of New Zealand.

Exhibiting a steely nerve that would

serve him well in later life,

Colin continues filming with his

suitcase camera.

Stan was in the wrong place, at the wrong

time, with the wrong sense of humor.

But what happened was,

since Colin was filming all of this,

it was sort of a forerunner of the

Rodney King tape.

Sixty years before that ever came to light

because he had evidence of all these

Secret-Service-type policemen

beating the living daylights out

of poor Stan the Man.

"Stan the Man in Buller" was Stan Wilson

and Colin McKenzie's

greatest commercial success.

It went straight to Stan's head.

Well Stan, misguided soul that he was,

thought that the notoriety of "Stan the

Man in Buller" was due to his talent.

He didn't understand that it was

sort of a piece of news.

You know, an incredible actuality

involving the Prime Minister and

all the government police.

So he got it into his head that this

would be his ticket to Hollywood.

Because the film, in fact, was shown in America

and got him a small, brief, bit of notoriety.

So he came to Hollywood thinking that

he'd be greeted with open arms

and would be perhaps the next Chaplin.

What he was, was the next unknown

standing on a line to get a job.

Despite the end of their

lucrative association.

Colin was secretly pleased to see

the back of Stan Wilson.

Colin's personal life, at

least, was more settled.

On December 4, 1926, he married Maybelle.

Hey, look, there's a bottle!

- What?

- Bottle.

About the right period too. It's got that

moulded sort of feel to it.

That's the way they made bottles

back in those days.

The finding of a bottle

encouraged the searchers.

A disintegrating wagon found nearby

seemed to confirm their excitement.

Let's just get a photo of this.

I'll get it.

Hey, Johnny, what sort of period

do you reckon this is?

More discoveries were to come.

We've got a road up here.

Come take a look at this, Pete.

Look at that.

What in the hell's a road doing here?

After days of fruitless searching,

would this road lead the team to

Colin McKenzie's lost city?

It keeps on going down here.

So, is there any road here at all?

No!

No road there and no reason for a road.

Colin's efforts to raise funds for

Salome all proved futile.

He approached local impresarios and

captains of industry without success.

Ultimately, the backing he needed so

desperately would come from Hollywood.

And a producer named Rex Solomon.

Rex Solomon was a self-made man who

became a millionaire,

oddly enough, by selling Bibles

and Bible paraphernalia.

And was very devout and very sincere

in his beliefs and in his interests

in the Bible and religion.

By 1929, Solomon's studio,

"Majestic Lion Pictures",

was turning out a dozen pictures a year,

all drawn from the Bible.

Colin McKenzie knew the

financier's business reputation.

He was determined to meet with him.

They met quite by chance

when Solomon went on a fishing

expedition to New Zealand.

McKenzie had already been making,

or trying to make,

his epic film of Salome for

5 years when he met Rex Solomon

and this was just propitious timing

because Solomon looked at it, realized the

potential of the film, and decided to back it.

And put his not inconsiderable funds behind

Colin McKenzie to get the film completed.

The paperwork was completed

with little formality.

Solomon agreed to a total

budget of 100,000

immediately advancing one quarter

of this in cash.

15,000 extras were hired.

Men, women, and children were

recruited from all around the district.

With the fervor of a general waging

a campaign,

Colin assembled and rehearsed his extras

for the biggest scene of his career.

A spectacular battle between Herod's troops

and a rag-tag army of messianic

fundamentalists.

This single sequence swallowed the entire

25,000 advance.

But Colin was undeterred.

Rex Solomon was a rich man.

On a single day in October 1929,

Rex Solomon lost his entire fortune.

It was no less a disaster

for Colin McKenzie.

For once, however, luck was on his side.

As capitalism crumbled on Wall Street,

halfway across the globe Communism

was about to flex its muscle.

Soviet leader, Joseph Stalin introduced

a propaganda drive.

The spirit of the revolution was to be

spread throughout the capitalist West

by any means necessary.

This it was, in 1930, that Colin received a

deputation

from the New Zealand Communist Party.

These documents record a transaction

which took place in October 1930

between my government and Colin McKenzie.

The agreement was that the money

was going to be used for the completion

of the revolutionary epic

documenting the class struggles

of ancient times.

Leading a new army of extras,

Colin returned to the city

he had built on the west coast.

But the Soviet's cash had strings attached:

Colin was forced to removed all religious

references from his Biblical epic.

The Baptist became a socialist dissident.

Herod became a fascist money lender.

While Salome became a prostitute

who abandons her evil ways

and learns the skills of

collective bargaining.

Colin hated the new version.

Loathed it. Despised it.

Barely took it seriously.

What he was doing was making two versions:

One for him and one for the Soviets.

So, if he took 5 takes for him,

one would do for the Soviets.

As Salome neared completion,

Colin and Maybelle were overjoyed

to discover they were expecting

their first child.

However, a bomb shell was in store.

Early in 1931, Colin received a telegram

from the Palermo Motion Picture Company.

The Palermo brothers were ruthless

and unscrupulous money men

who now owned Rex Solomon's assets,

including Salome.

They demanded immediate

delivery of the unfinished film.

The Soviet investors, too, were

growing impatient

and their threats were

equally intimidating.

Working under conditions of unbelievable

pressure, Colin raced to finish Salome.

Barely pausing to eat or sleep

he worked his cast and

crew into the ground.

To make matters worse,

the Palermo brothers had arrived in

New Zealand

and they were searching for Colin.

Desperate to finish the

last 20 shots of Salome,

Colin worked his crew

for 72 hours non-stop.

He failed to realize the terrible toll the

stress of filming was taking on Maybelle.

With one shot left to

shoot, Maybelle collapsed.

Maybelle went into early and violent labor.

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