ENTERTAINMENTS.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 56, Issue 130, 14 March 1936, Page 2

ENTERTAINMENTS.

ST. JAMES THEATRE. Richard Tauber’s enthralling voice has never been heard to better advantage tlisyi in “Heart’s Desire,” screening at the St. James Theatre to-night and on Monday night. The Biergarten set, where an Austrian singer with great local popularity (Richard Tauber) holds everyone entranced by his marvellous rendering of “Vienna, City of My Dreams,” is most effective. The film promises to make Tauber supreme on the screen as lie already is on stage and concert platform. It is in the “Heuringer” that a rich English girl, cleverly played by Leonora Corbett, first meets “Steidler.” She is in search of a tenor to sing in the new opera composed by her boy friend (played by Carl Harbord) in London, and immediately she bears “Steidler” she realises that her quest is oyer. Steidler is not anxious to leave the biergarten and his little sweetheart, but she over-rides his objections, for though music is the be-all and end-all of his exsitence, he shrinks from leaving his friends and the city he knows so well, to yenture into a strange life in a, new country. He is finally persuaded to go, and they leave Vienna for London. There are some extremely amusing scenes depicting poor Seidler’s attempts at mastering the new wonders that are opening up for him—the most difficult of all, perhaps, being the English language. He has a “phrase book” to help him in this respect, but although it is frequently of great assistance to him there are times when it lands him in trouble. MAJESTIC THEATRE. Two full-length films, each with a strong appeal along different lines, will be the attraction at the Majestic Theatre to-night and on Monday night. To gather material for “Wanderer of the Wasteland,” featuring Dean Jagger and Gail Patrick, Paramount’s outdoor screen romance, which is one of the offerings, Zane Grey spent more than 12 years travelling through desert wastes and the mountainous regions of Arizona. The writer took two trips on foot through the desolate depths of Death Valley with an old prospector. Their only beast of burden was, a burro and had anything happened to the long-eared “clesert canary,” both would have perished miserably in the heat. The character, Dismukes, played by Edward Ellis, is taken from the old prospector with whom Grey made the two perilous trips, and Adam Larey, played by Dean dagger, is another desert character who still lives in Gila Bend, Arizona. The second big pictureis “Here Comes Cookie,” featuring George Burns and Gracie Allen, the screen players who have been responsible for so much clever fun in earlier productions. This picture drew packed houses in Christchurch, where it was shown this week.