DOUBLE COMEDY

Press, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22436, 24 June 1938, Page 5

DOUBLE COMEDY

“Rawhide” and “Maid’s Night Out”

Two comedies of contrasted types arc combined in the new programme at the Crystal Palace, beginning to-day. The first is “Rawhide,” a new story of the west, with Lou Gehrig, the baseball star, in the lead, with him appearing Smith Ballew, the cowboy singer. The second film is “Maid’s Night Out.” The two stars are ably supported by Evalyn Knapp, who plays the role of Gehrig’s sister. Tiring of New York, the baseball player settles down in Rawhide, Arizona, to run a ranch with his sister. His refusal to sign a “protection” contract with some big-town racketeers who have moved in on the cattle business results in his assuming another “clean-up” role. Ballew, a singing cowboy lawyer, combines with Gehrig in his campaign. The “rowdies” find they have bitten off more than they expected when the ace first-baseman drives them from a billiard parlour. He pitches poolballs with all the unerring skill of a throw to third base. Just when Evalyn Knapp finds herself in a “spot,” where she is almost compelled to sign up with the gangsters, Lou steps in. Ballew introduces three new cowboy melodies, which soon will be on everyone’s lips. . . . “Drifting,” “When a Cowboy Goes to Town,” and “A Cowboy’s Life.” A double case of mistaken identity leads to amusing complications and causes much of the hilarious action in “Maid’s Night Out,” a romantic comedy with Joan Fontaine and Allan Lane in the leading roles. Joan Fontaine is seen as the daughter of a fortune-hunting society mother, and Lane portrays the role of a young scientist interested in the study of tropical fish. Through a series of unusual circumstances, the two meet while the boy is fulfilling the terms of a unique wager by working as a milkman in his father’s dairy. Although she is engaged to a rich young man of her mother’s choice, the young lady falls in love with her milkman, never realising that he is wealthy, while he in turn falls in love with her, thinking she is a maid, .The amusing story

follows their madcap romance along a turbulent course. Vicki Lester, a .former New York artists’ model, wins her first important screen role in “Maid’s Night Out.” She was one of the 10 professional models brought to Hollywood some months ago for “Vogues of 1938.” After this she played a minor role in “Patient in Room 18,” and then came her big opportunity in “Maid’s Night Out.” Ben Holmes directed this production by Robert Sisk. The noted character actor, H. B. Warner, will play one of the principal roles in Robert Louis Stevenson’s “Kidnapped.” He has been cast by 20th Cen-tury-Fox to portray an attorney o i eighteneth century Scotland.