Prime Minister of New Zealand ministerial power; in 1912 Thomas Mackenzie was the last prime minister to lose power through an unsuccessful confidence motion in the House of Representatives. One change brought about by the First World War was direct participation in governing the British Empire. Previously, New Zealand prime ministers had attended occasional colonial and imperial conferences, but they otherwise communicated with London through the governor (a position then appointed by the British government). In 1917, however, British Prime Minister David Lloyd George offered the New Zealand prime minister a seat in the Imperial War Cabinet, the British Empire's wartime coordinating body. In 1919,
The Prime Minister (film) British subsidiary of Warner Brothers. The company had previously made a successful biopic of the Prime Minister as "Disraeli" in 1929. The film's sets were designed by the art director Norman G. Arnold. In 1837, London novelist Benjamin Disraeli (John Gielgud) crashes his bicycle and is given a ride to a garden party by Mary Ann Wyndham-Lewis (Diana Wynyard). She has read his novels and says he should be in Parliament. Disraeli asks Mary Ann to help him, so she goes to the Conservative party leaders and gets their support for Disraeli. "The Prime Minister" opened in the United States