“ROSE MARIE”

Dominion, Volume 30, Issue 192, 11 May 1937, Page 5

“ROSE MARIE”

At Majestic Theatre on Friday The gifted quartette who piloted "Naughty Marietta” to unprecedented success—the otars, Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy, director W. S. van Dyke, and the producer Hunt Stromberg —have again turned their talents to a giant enterprise, the production of the classic light opera, "Rose Marie.” The result of their work will be seen at the .Majestic Theatre on Friday, when the Wellington season will open with a special session at 11 a.tn. Due of the most successful theatrical properties e.\tant, "‘Rose Marie” is known the world over. Jt was mt produced'in New York in 1924, running two years. It opened in London in 1925, and ran two years there, at the Drury Lane Theatre. The Magador Theatre in I’aris first. • saw "Rose' Marie” in 1920, where revivals of it have been produced almost every year since. In 1927 the great musical spread to Berlin, and, simultaneously, Australia. Al the same time five road companies were operating in America. One remained in Chicago two years. Detroit kept one for 28 weeks, 'Montreal for twenty weeks. It was one of the greatest successes of the speaking stage. And now “Rose Marie” has been made into a talking picture. Furthermore, it was filmed almost entirely out-of-doors,-in the gorgeous mountain-lake settings of the Sierra Nevadas. Such world-famed songs as "The Indian Love Call,” “Roee Marie," “Song of the Mounties,” and "Pardon Me, Madame,” are sung against the majesty of glimmering lakes, tall pines and superb mountain vistas. The Totem Pole number alone is claimed to set a new high standard in photographic beauty and screen entertainment. Filmed at Emerald Bay, on Lake Tahoe, scenic spot of America, peopled with more than seven hundred Indians in a setting of towering, grotesque totems, it is as spectacular as it is rhythmic. Briefly, "Rose Marie’’ is the story of an opera star who, travelling incognito through the North Woods in search of her brother, an outlaw, falls in love with the North-west “Mountie,” whose inflexible job is to capture the criminal. The climax of the story is as dramatic as the finish is romantic. Supporting the co-stars is a line east of seasoned players. James Stewart, [ featured in many New York stage hits, plays the role of Miss MacDonald’s brother. Reginald Owen, sterling character actor, is cast as the singing star’s harried manager. Allan Jones, the handsome tenor who was first heard in “A Night at the Opera,” and found fame in “Show Boat,” has the part of Romeo in a musical sequence from “Romeo and Juliet.” George Regan plays the half-breed, Boniface, who is Rose Marie's guide. Other prominent players inelude Robert Greig as the hotel proprietor. Una O’Connor ns a maid, Lucien Littlefield, Allan Mowbray. David Nivens, Herman Bing, and the sensational Gilda Gray of Ziegfeld Follies fame, who sings and dances to the kind of music she made popular on the stage. Herbert Stothart. who. with Rudolf Friml. wrote the score, has written several new numbers for the screen production. He personally conducted the symphony orchestra in the recordings.