New York, NY (Top40 Charts) The female Haganah agent is racing against time to find the stolen Patek-Phillippe watch that is the key to a numbered
Swiss bank account that will fund the departure of another ship of Jewish refugees only weeks after the disastrous sinking of the ill-fated Struma.
The award-winning script CITY OF SPIES, written by Mike Lanahan and Eugene Kallman, will have its first public table read on the evening of Thursday, August 1, starting at 7:30 pm at the Writers Guild of
America West headquarters, 7000 W 3rd St in Hollywood. A reception in the WGA Lounge will immediately follow the reading and include an opportunity to interact with the cast.
WGA members seeking an invitation to the event may send to mlana(at)att(dot)net a notification of their interest in attending. Invitations will include the protocol for making formal reservations.
The new screenplay, a World War II romance and spy thriller, features the true story of how agents of the Haganah, the Zionist secret army, moved thousands of desperate European Jews through Istanbul, to British Palestine against the combined resistance of Germany, England, France, the USSR and Turkey.
America was neutral in early 1941 when the story takes place.
Award-winning writer-director Michael Schroeder will act as host for the table-read event. Schroeder is a member of the Directors Guild of America. He has taught film at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts, in Winston-Salem and he has made over forty-eight feature films in various countries including Australia, Mexico, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Botswana, Belize, Canada and the United States.
Last year, the Lanahan/Kallman screenplay CITY OF SPIES won a prestigious WGA Seasoned Readings Program competition for best script and is now making the rounds for consideration by major production companies in this country and in Europe.
Said Lanahan about the context of the screenplay: "What actually happened during the war years in Istanbul was far more risky but much important to the future of
Israel than the refugees that were also crowding into the port city of Casablanca. The film CASABLANCA made the intrigues of that much smaller North African city, controlled by the collaborationist Vichy government of France, far better known in the West but the refugees there were in smaller numbers, wealthier and mostly headed west to the Americas and the Caribbean."
Added Lanahan: "Our script is focused on the relationship and collaboration between an American foreign correspondent and a female Haganah agent. The agent is racing against time to find the stolen Patek-Phillippe watch that is the key to a numbered
Swiss bank account that will fund the departure of another ship of refugees only weeks after the disastrous sinking of the ill-fated Struma. The Struma, with failed engines, had been towed away from Istanbul and abandoned in the
Black Sea by the Turks, only to be destroyed and sunk there by an enormous and mysterious explosion. Nearly 800 Jewish refugees died in that murderous tragedy."
