SCREENLAND JOTTINGS

Evening Star, Issue 20256, 17 August 1929, Page 21

SCREENLAND JOTTINGS

Miss Gerda Maurus, the successful star of tho Fritz Lang production, ‘ The Spy,’ has been engaged for tho leading role in ‘ High Treason.’ The Continental players, Gustav Frolilich and Harry Hardt, will play opposite Miss Maurus.

More than 135 musical numbers will be incorporated in the score for ‘ She Goes to War,’ the new Henry King production, in which Eleanor Boardman lias tho principal role. Modest Altschuler, founder of the Russian Symphony Orchestra, is composing the score. In this symphonised sound film the orchestral score is rendered by the Los Angeles Symphony Society, composed of seventy-five artists, Denis King, the most romantic figure of the London and New York stage, has been engaged to play tho leading role in an elaborate singing and talking vershn of ‘The Vagabond King,’ in which ho first sang his way to fame. ‘ Desert Nights,’ a vivid story of grim revenge, set amid dark Africa, will be released shortly. John Gilbert, Ernest Torrence, and Mary Nolan are seen in this picture. Gilbert, as manager of a large diamond mine, brings to this role,a dramatic fire never before witnessed in his screen appearances. 51 ary Nolan plays the heroine in a most convincing manner. Ernest Torrence gives another one of his characterisations for which lie is noted. British International Pictures have now decided.to put complete dialogue to their film of Thomas Hardy’s ‘ Under the Greenwood Tree.’ Harry Lachman, who is directing this picture, has secured some exceptionally beautiful exterior “ shots,” as well as many fine interior scenes.

Miss Anita Page has been assigned the leading feminine role in ‘ Speedway,’ William Haines’s new picture for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayev. Miss Page won her first screen fame opposite Hames in ‘ Telling the World/ followed by her triumphs in ‘ The Broadway Melody,’ and ‘ Our Dancing Daughters/ Following on the action of London and Australia, of wiring certain legitimate theatres for talking • pictures, the Grand Opera House, Wellington has been equipped with Western Electric apparatus for sound pictures. The Grand Opera House reopened as a talkie theatre on Friday, with the allsinging and talking picture, ‘ The Innocents of Paris/ starring Maurice Chevalier. • There is a complete supporting programme of talking and singing acts, including Walter Huston in ‘ The Bishop’s Candlesticks/ ‘ Favourite Melodies/ and ‘ The Instalment Collector.’

Warner Brothers have brought ‘ The Desert Song ’ to the screen in a lavish Vitaphone production. The screen operetta has an all-star cast augmented by a chorus of one hundred singers. The players include Miss Carlotta King, John Boles, Miss Louise Fazenda, Johnny Arthur, Liss Myrna Ley, and John Miljan. George Marion, who has been engaged by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer for a leading rert in the all-talking screen version ot Eugene O’Neill’s play, ‘ Anna Christie/ may also do directorial work at the Culver City studio under the terms of a contract just signed. ‘ Anna Christie ’ is Miss Greta Garbo’s first talkie and is being directed by Clarence Brown.