As if movie-making in sunniest Hollywood and darkest Africa were not difficult enough, a Walt Disney location crew is now filming one 30 feet under water. In the Caribbean, off Nassau, Bahamas, 83 actor-divers, cameramen, grips, propmen, professional salvage men, lifeguards and directors are trying to make their CinemaScope version of Jules Verne’s science-fiction classic, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, as authentic as possible. The result has been the greatest underwater venture in film history.
Daily the crew has to cope with choppy surface, undersea turbulence, leaky air valves on diving equipment, a complicated communications system and sunlight that seems invariably to hide whenever all the other conditions are right. Toughest problem has been the diving gear itself: a new type had to he invented to clothe the fabled Nautilus crew - Victorian-looking (see cover) yet practical and self-contained because that was, the way Jules Verne imagined it for his mythical hero, Captain Nemo. […]
