KING’S THEATRE

Dominion, Volume 34, Issue 109, 1 February 1941, Page 15

KING’S THEATRE

Lucille Ball, who added some of the sparkle to “Five Came Back” when that excellent little show was doing its rounds, makes an electrifying appearance in “Dance, Girl, Dance,” the R.K.O. film now screening at the King’s Theatre. She makes excellent play in an excellent part which is well set-off by the contrast, of Maureen O'Hara’s gentle, almost wistful appearance. Judy (Maureen O’Hara) and. Bubbles (Lucille Ball) are members of a dancing team in search of work. Judy’s lodestar is the ballet, for which she .has trained hard, and to the exclusion of almost everything else but the need to make a living. Bubbles' iS just as direct, but more in the short-term class—she wants a “good time,” and she wants it now, even if she has to marry some rich man to get it. In the small-time halls, where the girls stand the best chance of engagement, Judy’s classic style is a drug on the market, whereas Bubbles’ slap-dash, free-and-easy burlesque, is just what ,is wanted. She gets a job through influence,” and makes such a success of her music-hall turn that her salary goes up and up. She does not forget Judy, however, who is overjoyed at an offer to work till she finds that it means no more than using her ballet work as a foil to the real attraction of the evening, which is Bubbles’ not too fastidious hip-wriggling across the footlights. If that were all there is to this story it would still be interesting for the, sake of .Lucille Ball, who livens up an already lively film with a personality and a bighearted gift for comedy that is exciting to see. Woven in and out of the passages at arms between the two women—which end in a surprising victory—are a couple of threads of romance, conducted skilfully on the one hand by Louis Hayward, and in the other by Ralph Bellamy, who blossoms forth surprisingly as a ballet impresario. And there, for all too short a time, is .Maria Ouspenskaya as Aladame Basilova, mother by proxy to all her students, deft and sure in her acting. “Dance, Girl, Dance” is a bright show which opens with the kind of rigour one seems to remember from those good days when movement was the prime requisite of a “movie.” OPERA HOUSE That “Convoy” is already well advanced into the seventh successive week of a season in Wellington, where it is now being shown at the Opera House, is in itself an appreciable tribute to the manner in which it has stirred the public, and those who see it cannot fail to recognize that there is real humour and real excitement about, the way “the other fellow” does his job—specially when the job is that of the Royal Navy and .Mercantile Marine. “Convoy,” though it is a fiction film, is based on day by day happenings of the war at sea. It serves the double purpose of bringing home to landlubbers the fact that, their safetv depends in large measure on the courage of the men at sea, a'nd of providing magnificent entertainment. When the story opens the cruiser Apollo is returning from a successful action against a German submarine, and everyone on board is eagerly awaiting the expected award of shore-leave. Both officers and crew express their views—and their expectations—about this with some vigour and a great ileal of humour. But it is not that way with the Navy in wili-time; the Apollo is ordered to assist in convoy work at. once, ami does so. though not without a good deal of hearty grousing on the part of the men. Just before she sails, the new lieutenant (John Clements), comes aboard. and .

the social temperature drops sharply because everyone remembers that he was the man responsible for the captain’s unhappy divorce a few years ago. But the lieutenant is irrepressible, and before the story ends the quarrel is reconciled and he stands high in the estimation of all who knew him. The love interest, heightened by the fact that the woman concerned is a refugee in one of the ships of the convoy, is woven neatly in and out of the story till the happy ending, but never does it more than add a touch of domestic tension to the main theme of the Navy men and their colleagues of the Mercantile Marine. AUSTRALIAN FILM “Forty Thousand Horsemen” Shotfn Having attended Thursday afternoon’s Wellington screening of “Forty Thousand Horsemen” at his own request, Mr. Noel Coward. English actor-playwright, said lie was pleased to see that the motion picture industry in Australia —it is an Australian production—had made such good progress. He was particularly attracted by the acting of Betty Bryant, Grant Taylor. “Chipcs” Rafferty and Joe Valli, and hoped the picture would have as successful a reason in New Zealand as it had linil in Sydney. "Forty Thousand Horsemen” deals with the exploits of the Australian Light Horse in Palestine during the Great .War.