Sydney Neter, founder and managing director of Amsterdam-based sales agent SND Films, is going into business with Marilyn Monroe and Joan Collins.
He has just taken international rights to two films, one featuring the legendary Hollywood actress and the other in which the British star of The Stud and Dynasty is at its centre.
The Mother Of Beauty tells the story of model agent Emmeline Snively, who ran the Blue Book Model Agency in Hollywood and is credited with discovering Marilyn Monroe. The documentary, available in 52 and 60 minute versions, has an extraordinary back story with a Dutch connection.
“The Snively archive was found on eBay. Dutch people bought it and didn’t know what they were getting into until they read the whole diary. There were pictures there etc. They decided to get involved with a filmmaker,” Neter explained.
Directed by Frank van Osch, the film looks at the part Snively played in making stars not just of Marilyn Monroe but of Jayne Mansfield and various other big name stars. Neter is talking up The Mother Of Beauty at IDFA’s Docs For Sale this week.
The Joan Collins project (fiction) is called Gerry. It screened at the LA Shorts Festival, Manchester Shorts Festival and at the London Shorts Festival. The film tells the story of an elderly lady, Hilda (played by Joan Collins), facing twilight years of loneliness and isolation, who, while clearing out her deceased husband’s belongings, unearths a long-buried secret. Collins won the Best Actress Award at LA Shorts.
The film came to Neter from its producer, Hester Ruoff. The co-directors are Victoria Hollup and Paul Agar. Collins has lent her full support to the project.
“She is good in it. She is not the diva that you know,” Neter says of Collins.
