CRYSTAL PALACE

Press, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22435, 23 June 1938, Page 17

CRYSTAL PALACE

“RAWHIDE” AND “MAID’S NIGHT OUT”

‘The bark of “six-shooters” and the crack of baseball bats are mixed with colourful range melodies in “Rawhide,” a new 20th Century-Fox film, starring Smith Ballew and Lou Gehrig, which begins at the Crystal Palace to-mor-row with “Maid’s Night Out.” The story deals with bare-fisted adventure and fast action in the rough Arizona cattle lands. To the tune of rollicking range ballads, Lou Gehrig, the baseball idol, and Smith Ballew, the singing cowboy, go into partnership to destroy the most dangerous band of range racketeers ever to invade the west.

Evalyn Knapp, Arthur Loft, and Si Jenks are also featured in the film. In “Maid's Night Out” Joan Fontaine and Allan Lane have the leading roles. This comedy derives much of its mirth from the mistaken identities involving the two principals. Lane is the amateur milkman, whose gruff, selfmade father insists on his learning the milk business before he will allow him to take the family yacht to Tahiti for his marine investigation. One of the conditions of the agreement provides that Lane must not capitalise the family name. Whfen he meets Joan Fontaine doing housework at her luxurious home, he assumes she is a servant girl, an assumption she maintains for the fun of it. On this groundwork are built up the novel ramifications of the plot. The current attraction at the Crystal Palace is “In Old Chicago.”

CIVIC “45 FATHERS” When Jane Withers joins up with the ventriloquising Hartmans, the Broadway satirists of the dance, the result is her funniest picture, “45 Fathers,” which will begin at the Civic tomorrow. The film also features Thomas Beck and Louise Henry, A group of millionaires draws lots to determine “which lucky man is going to have his life brightened by this sweet little girl,” and then they call for help as Jane starts throwing things round and fihe ventriloquising Hartmans start throwing their dancing, voices, and discretion to the winds. The screen play by Frances Hyland and Albert Ray, based on.a story by Mary Bickel, first finds Jane with the Hartmans aboard a vessel bound for New York, where she is to be adopted by the members of a millionaire explorers’ club, of which her father was a member. A series of hilarious situations results when the inseparable trio, after arriving in New York, find their way to the club, where the solemn members are thrown into an uproar as Jane, goes wild. Taken by Richard Carle, the winner in the drawing, to his nephew’s home, Jane, in spite of her uproarious antics, takes time off to study the interest of Louise Henry, an attractive but scheming society girl, in Thomas Beck, and proceeds to rescue him from the entanglement, “International Settlement,” an exciting story of life in Shanghai, will conclude its season at the Civic Theatre this evening