SCREEN NEWS AND NOTES

Bay of Plenty Times, Volume LXV, Issue 12258, 23 February 1937, Page 4

SCREEN NEWS AND NOTES

film fare for the week THE REGENT To-niglU and Wednesday, “Let’s Sing Again,” Bobby Breen. Thursday and Friday.— "Whom the Gods Love.” “Hot Money,” Ross Alexander, Beverly Roberts, ly Roberts. ' . Saturday, Monday.—“ Hearts Divided,” Marion Davies. TOWN HALL To-night and Wednesday.—“ Postal Inspector,” Ricardo Cortez, Patricia Ellis. Saturday, Monday—“ Too Many Parents,” Frances Farmer, Lester Matthews; “Desert Gold,” Buster Crabbe, Raymond Hatton. GEORGE HOUSTON Houston was born in Hampton, N. J., on January 11, 1900. Schooled at Blair Academy in New Jersey, he advanced to the Institute of Musical Art in New York, studying under Frank Damrosch, brother of the famous conductor. At graduation he enrolled in the United States Naval Reserve to serve in the World War. Then he joined a French ambulance unit tor two years, during which he was gassed and shell-shocked, and awarded the Croix de Guerre and two citations. After the war, he enrolled in Rutgers College, studied agriculture for a year, played varsity football, and then the nomadic spirit gripped him. He became a sailor on a tramp steamer. When the vessel put in at a West Indies port, Houston remained. He worked as a “dock walloper,” graduating to a watchman, tally clerk and assistant loader. Then a disagreement with the manager, a fight, and a sailor’s berth back to New York. Here he obtained a runner’s job and sang in a choir. He quit to return to the Institute of Musical Art. When he left he taught

“WHOM THE GODS DOVE” All is not Vienna that appears to be! In short, there are some scenes in ‘‘Whom The Gods Love,” which will he at the Regent on Thursday and Friday, which started in Vienna, and ended in Essex! Basil Dean, the director, and Victoria Hopper, owrr one of the loveliest mansions in Essex. In the large gardens a reconstruction was built of a portion of tho famous “Augarten” in Vienna. Sound trucks, arc lamps, cameras, actors, technicians, motored down from London en masse. Even the sun co-operated and consented to shine, so that the sequence was concluded perfectly. It is a safe bet that not one of the hundreds of thousands who will see the film will be able to pick out.these scenes. The person who enjoyed them most was Victoria Hopper. She could walk straight out of her bedroom on to the “set.” And could entertain to tea in her own drawing-room only twenty yards from the cameras. MATCHES TURN HILLY INTO REAL MAGICIAN Billy Lee, aged 5, has become a practicing magician, and is so good at his new trade that he is thinking of demanding a retainer from the match industry. Billy, who plays a featured role in “Too Many Parents,” which comes on Saturday and Monday to the Town Hall, takes two matches, lays one in his palm, and rubs the other in his hair for a moment. Then he slowly brings the head of the second match against the match in his palm—the match in his palm will immediately leap two or three feet in the air. As a result, in every idle moment, prop men, camera men and others in the crew of "Too Many Parents” are industriously spending their time rubbing matches in their hair. So far, however, nobody has caught on to the trick. BEAUTIES DRILLED TO DANCE MINUET IN HISTORIC FILM Chorus girl type of dancers are a dime a dozen in Hollywood. A call from a studio dance director for one hundred girls for a number in a film musical will bring out anywhere from two to five hundred beauteous blondes, brunettes and redheads. Men and women with a working knowledge of the minuet, however, are scarcer than popular tax collectors. Firdt National studios put in a call for fifty men and fifty women who could dance the minuet in a ballroom sequence during the filming of Marion Davies’ new Cosmopolitan production, "Hearts Divided,” an historical romance laid in 1803, which opens at the Regent on Saturday. Exactly eighteen women and eleven men responded, Another call was hastily placed for a dance director who could drill a group in the graceful movement of the ifiinuet, Eddie Larkin, who usually acts as assistant to Bobby Connolly, dance director, qualified because he directed a minuet for John Murray Anderson’s New York play, “Dearest Enemy,” back in 1925. Larkin gathered a group of one hundred men and women, including the original twenty-nine who responded to the first call, took them all on one of First National’s sound stages and in two days had them dancing as pretty a minuet as ever was filmed. The dances will be seen in “Hearts Divided,” a glamorous romance of the historical courtship of Betsy Patterson, belle of Baltimore, by Jerome Bonaparte, brother of the French Emperor.

George Houston, who appears in “Let's Sing Again,” showing at the Regent tonight amt Un-morrow. school and supervised music in Bernards Township, New Jersey. Tiring of teaching he returned to New York for concert work. Then he joined the American Opera Company, for which he played In “Boris Godonov” and "Faust.” He has sung for the Chicago Opera Company, Philadelphia Grand Opera Company and Gilbert and Sullivan Opera Company. His concert career numbers engagements as star soloist for the Oratoria Society of New York, the Schola Cantorum of New York and leading fymphony orchestras. As an actor he played several seasons with dramatic stock companies, enacted the title role in “Cyrano de Bergerac,” and played in “New Moon,” “Chee Chee,” “Casanova,” “Fioretta,” “Melody,” “The O’Flynn” and “Thumbs Up.” Houston made his screen debut opposite Josephine Hutchinson in “The Melody Lingers On,” and his fine baritone voice and distinctive personality are said to be revealed to bdtter advantage in “Let’s Sing Again,” showing at the Regent tonight and to-morrow.

Day

us- by Slmrme Whdmy in (jtowmourit Cptcbtres SIMPLICITY KEYNOTE OF DAYTIME FROCK It is just one of those simple little daytime prints that always looks so fresh and charming and it is one af the favourite frocks of Elanore Whitney's—the new Paramount player who is appearing in “The Big Broadcast of 1937.” Tiny irregular spots in red, green and black cover a white background. The frock is made in the two-piece style and the bodice is gathered into a square yolk of pintucked organdie, which is outlined with a band or narrow red ribbon velvet. The velvet also holds a frill of the organdie at the high neckline and completes the short, bouffant sleeves.