Viscount's Butterfly

"Viscount Hidemaro Konoye, W. K. conductor here, has completed a modern and Japanized version of Puccini's Madame Butterfly which has been submitted to Paramount for possible production. . . . Konoye leaves for America July 21 and if agreeable, production will start soon after his arrival."

In Variety last week, this news item appeared under the headline, "Poor Butterfly Gets Jap Rewrite and Modernization; Par to Produce?" Variety's Tokyo correspondent evidently considered it unnecessary to mention that in addition to being a W. K. (well-known) conductor, Viscount Konoye is also brother of Japan's new Premier, Prince Fumimaro Konoye. In Tokyo the Premier's brother's new Butterfly caused no commotion at all. This was because Viscount Konoye, whose family has assimilated easygoing Western ways and whose nephew is captain of Princeton's golf team, scandalized Tokyo society so thoroughly ten years ago by "stooping to become a bandmaster" that all his later doings--including a brilliantly successful U. S. tour last winter, in the course of which he conducted the Philadelphia Orchestra--are considered anticlimactic.

In Hollywood, Viscount Konoye's discussions with studio officials will concern modifications of Madame Butterfly (which Paramount made twice before, most lately in 1932 with Sylvia Sydney and no music) to make it more complimentary to Japan, better propaganda for the kind of occidentalization in which the Konoyes specialize. In the Konoye Butterfly, Pinkerton is a U. S. musician instead of a Navy lieutenant. After he reluctantly deserts Cho Cho San, she decides to be a singer, goes to the U. S. for her grand debut. Instead of a tragedy, the Konoye Butterfly, which the Viscount hopes to have photographed mostly in Japan with a Japanese actress in the title role, ends happily. Conductor of the orchestra at Cho Cho San's New York premiere is, by a happy coincidence, her old friend Pinkerton.

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