EDDY AND MACDONALD

Evening Star, Issue 22891, 24 February 1938, Page 11

EDDY AND MACDONALD

CO-STARRED IN * MAYTIME * * Maytime, ’ which is to begin its Dunedin session at the Empire this evening, with a midnight matinee, reunites Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy, the screen’s favourite singing stars, in a film that is one of the musical treats of the year. It is based on the famous New York stage success by Rida Johnson Young, and provides the singing team with unlimited opportunities to exploit their outstanding talents. The famous song hit of the play, ‘ Sweetheart, Will You Remember P’ has been retained, while the remainder of the music is divided between, the sentimental and the operatic. Directed*.by Robert Z. Leonard, the man who gave filmgoers The Great Ziegfeld,’ with a wide variety of songs by Sigmund Romberg and Herbert Stothart, and with a brilliant supporting cast, headed by John Barrymore in his first appearance since ‘ Romeo and Juliet,’ the new M.-G.-M. musical opens as one of the outstanding sensations of the year. Miss MacDonald sings two complete operatic arias and portions of others. ■ Eddy has three novelty songs, ‘ Students’ Drinking Song’ ‘ Vive L’Opera’ and ‘ Virginia Ham and Eggs’ all sung in brilliant manner. Eighty sets were constructed. Most elaborate is the court of Louis Napoleon in 1865. There are opera houses, great parks, forests, streets of Paris, x lavish hotel suites an entire section of the Latin quarter of Paris, an apple orchard in full bloom, and numerous other colourful sets. . In the development of the plot Miss MacDonald is seen as an old lady trying to straighten out the romantic difficulties of a young girl who does not know whether to choose romance or an operatic career. The scene goes hack some years, to the days when the old lady was young and faced the same difficulty. Her life is told in detail —-in all its triumphs, its defeats and its disappointments. In the supporting cast of 1 Maytime ’ John Barrymore plays a picturesque role as the temperamental impresario, his first since the memorable ‘ Romeo and Juliet,’ which was one of the sensational pictures of 1937. There is a newcomer in the cast, Lynne Carver, a delicately beautiful young singer from Kentucky Blue Grass regions, who sings and acts unusually Well. She and Tom Brown provide the juvenile romance in. the story. There is also the inimitable Herman Bing, who never fails to provoke laughter on his appearance in a filrq.