Hollywood: The Runaways

Since Hollywood is not an actual city, it has gradually become anyplace where films are made. Long ago, Hollywood spread itself out all over the world. All that is left in California is Los Angeles with a hole in it, like a waffle grill that has committed suicide.

Of 38 American films now in production. 21 are so-called runaways. Last week the following locations were among the more interesting of the current worldwide Hollywoods:

∙KYOTO. Yul Brynner, Richard Widmark and George Chakiris are starring in a film called Flight from Ashiya, a hands-across-the-Pacific opera about U.S. airmen who rescue some Japanese sailors during World War II. A Japanese film company is co-producing the picture with Harold Hecht. Flacks have been busy stressing Ashiya's monumental "humanism," and Japanese newspapers are suggesting that the principals are men of depth and tradition.

Greek-American George Chakiris has been described in print as "a man right out of Greek mythology." Onetime Dramatics Instructor Widmark is frequently billed as "a university lecturer." Brynner, whos Super Blue Blade head is as smooth as ice-cold Crisco, has won the rapt admiration of countless head-shaven Buddhist nuns and Zen monks. The Japanese refer to all three actors as bunkajin (men of culture). Trying to talk like bunkajin, the actors have come up with some pretty distinguished bunk. "I'm deeply interested in the serene movement which characterizes Japanese dancers specializing in traditional schools," says Chakiris, never fluffing the line. "I think I have a lot to learn from the symbolism of Kabuki acting," pontificates Brynner. Languid Suzy Parker, who plays a Red Cross nurse, seems to have less Nippo-philia than the boys. Would she pose in a kimono, please? Not a chance.

On the set, concord prevails. In the first day's shooting, Director Michael Anderson (Around the World in 80 Days) completed an entire scene in half an hour. "Nothing to it," he said. He may be right. ∙THE PLAINS OF CASTILE. Samuel (King of Kings) Bronston is back in Spain. This time he has built a 70-acre replica of Peking, mainly out of 1,320,000 feet of steel tubing, but replete with tiered pagodas and gilt roofs shining in the sun. He has dug a canal, surrounded the metropolis with a 40-ft.-high wall, and filled the streets with Chinese from London and Marseille. He has a cast of 6,500. and when he needs quiet for a take, he blows an air-raid siren. In the immediate foreground, he has Ava Gardner. Paul Lukas. Flora Robson, David Niven and Charlton Ben-Heston.

In fact, Bronston has everything but a final script. No one knows precisely what the film is about. Shot in Super Technirama-70, it is to be called 55 Days at Peking. It more or less intends to describe what happened to the 500 Westerners who withstood a Boxer siege there in 1900. A Bronston flack admits that Bronston is seeking "a compromise of accuracy and suspense." Coolies are lying under cork trees while writers are working like coolies, and new Confuciuses arrive on every plane.