Author Archive for: ‘Neil Parsons’

Abstract The Rose of Rhodesia (1918) has received short shrift in film history because it was made by a company independent from, and crushed by, the South African entertainment business monopoly controlled from Johannesburg by I. W. Schlesinger from 1913 up to his death in 1949. Schlesinger recruited Harold M. Shaw to script and direct the “super-films” De Voortrekkers (1916) and The Symbol of …

Harold Shaw parted ways with the movie magnate I. W. Schlesinger in October 1917, after an acrimonious personal dispute, and immediately set about organizing his own film production company. Shaw poached leading production staff from Schlesinger’s African Film Productions at Killarney in Johannesburg, and signed up Schlesinger’s bitter rivals, A. M. Fisher and sons of Cape Town, to distribute his …