Princely India

This press sheet for PRINCELY INDIA, a 1949 Warner Bros. two-reel specialty in Technicolor, was found crammed between two pages in a trade magazine of the same year, and caught my attention, largely because it was on bright yellow paper (not so well reproduced in these scans).

Reading more into it, I find that it was written (and I suppose directed) by Owen Crump, who married into the Fairbanks family, and a few years later directed and wrote his most important film, Paramount's 3-D epic about the Korean War, CEASE FIRE! Crump also produced a couple of interesting features in the Central's library-- GUNN, a feature version of the TV show with a more mature Craig Stevens, and wrote and produced ZEPPELIN, the 1971 epic about the disasterous airship.

Doing a bit more quick research, I find that Crump's credit listings between 1942 and 1952 are vague, at least on the Internet Movie Database. Considering how much information is missing from that site, though, it wouldn't surprise me to learn he spent most of the time doing short subjects and newsreels. PRINCELY INDIA seems to be proof that he was, at the very least, working.

The "supervisor" on the production is George Hollingshead, who hailed from Garfield, New Jersey, a stone's throw from where I live. I don't know what the "supervisor" tag was supposed to be, but judging from his MANY credits as a short subject producer, I can imagine it was their way of saying he produced the short.

According to some of the planted articles, who all refer to the film playing at the strand rather than the generic "..." or "your name here" slugs, Lou Marcelle provided the commentary for the film. Marcelle led an interesting career as a character actor on radio in the '30s and '40s, but film buffs will remember his voice as narrator for such classics as CASABLANCA and DESTINATION TOKYO. For a short period, he was the Paul Frees of his time.

Does anyone know where one can get a copy of this obscure film?