Olympics--Ltd.

Sometimes British Cinemaster J. Arthur Rank must feel that nobody in the world appreciates a really enterprising man. He might have expected cheers for his latest ambitious project: to put a full-length Technicolor record of this summer's Olympic Games on the world's screens within a bare three weeks of the last event. Instead, the predominant noise was a squawk from other moviemakers, shut out of the Olympics when Rank paid -L-25,000 for exclusive film (and television) rights. By last week, however, with Rank's announcement of final arrangements, everyone calmed down.

After the Supermanic. British newsreels will have access to 50 reels of black & white which Rank will shoot alongside the color. Price: -L-2,000 per company, plus the loan of some cameramen. U.S. newsreels, as usual, will get their coverage by swapping equal footage on other subjects. British Movietonews executives now feel: "It could be worse. We're satisfied we'll get a fair break." British Paramount still feels bitterly against the Olympic Association for peddling an exclusive in the first place, but thinks Rank's arrangements are "very adequate." The Association, with 25% of its costs defrayed in a single windfall, is above grieving over such bitterness.

So far as a first-rate record of the Olympics is concerned, Rank's monopoly of the shooting may be all to the good. Only thus, perhaps, with all cameras under single control, will it be possible to do for the London games what Leni Riefenstahl did for Berlin's in 1936.

Riefenstahl's Olympische Spiele, for all its fake slants and supermanic chest-beating, was by far the best and most exhaustive sports record ever put on film. She used 40 to 60 cameras with a fine, eye for crisis and sidelight, pageantry and crowd, and assembled them with one of the world's most striking talents for cutting. To handle Britain's film, Rank has hired bouncing, white-haired little Castleton Knight, 54, head of Gaumont British News, who did the Technicolor films of the royal wedding and the royal wedding presents.

Cor-Blimey. Knight's plans are grandiose. Technicolor is supplying him with 800,000 feet of negative, 19 specially adapted cameras, 60 specially trained cameramen and technicians. He will dress his whole team in green trousers and white blazers, and provide motorized scooters to zip them about the grounds at Wembley. Knight himself will direct the whole business from a control booth just below the royal box--dangling his crews at the ends of eight miles of telephone line. This special telephone exchange, will be officially known as "Corinthian," already unofficially shortened to Cor-Blimey.

The black & white film will be processed daily by Rank and delivered to newsreels for editing before their ordinary biweekly releases. (Says Movietonews Editor Gerald Sanger: "It'll be like D-day all over again.") The Technicolor will be processed on a 24-hour basis. There will be 16 separate versions of it, each highlighting the athletes of a different nation and each in the language of that nation. (Red Barber, Ted Husing and Bill Stern will handle the American language.) The Games end Aug. 14; the world premiere of Rank's XIV Olympiad--The Glory of Sport will be held in London's West End on Sept. 2.

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