ENTERTAINMENTS

Greymouth Evening Star, 29 April 1937, Page 14

ENTERTAINMENTS

OPERA HOUSE That inimitable team of screen lovers Dick Powell with tuneful songs on his lips, and Ruby Keeler with her rhythmic dancing, together with Joan Rlonclell and Jack Oakie, head the cast of “Colleen,” which comes to the Opera House to-night. The cast is one of the most notable, and includes Hugh Herbert, Louise Fazenda, Paul Draper, Marie Wilson, and a score of other famous names besides two hundred beautiful chorus girls and dancing youth. The story is packed with rollicking comedy, romance and a touch of real drama. There is a plot about the efforts of Powell to straighten out the business affairs of his wealthy and eccentric uncle, as well as his love ffcrapes. Dick and Miss Keeler go in for some romancing and are all tied up in a score of hilarious entanglements. Two mammoth and spectacular numbers are created and staged by Bobby Connolly with scores of beautiful chorus girls in each. One takes place on an ocean liner, and the other in a modiste shop, a gorgeous fashion show. The settings are exceptionally beautiful, displaying new designs of glass and streamline furniture, as well as the latest mode in gowns. Powell sings two songs in his inimitable manner, one by himself and one in which Miss Keelei- gives a lyrical recitative. The other, a comedy number, sung by Jack Oakie and Joan Biondell, is entitled “Boulevardier from the Bronx.” Miss Keeler has a winsome' personality,, and gives an exhibition of exceptional tap dancing, particularly a love lyric without words, which she and Paul Draper do together. “Colleen” is the latter’s first film he having been engaged specifically to dance in this film. Oakie and Miss Blondell are teamed as gold diggers, heavy roles treated in comedy fashion. Both are excellent, as is Hugh Herbert as the eccentric millionaire uncle of Powell, whose business vagaries keep his nephew on tenterhooks, and whope philanderings drive his wife to hysteria, the latter part played with skill by Miss Fazenda. Others who handle important roles in : elude Marie Wilson, Luis Alberni, Hobart Cavanaugh, Berton Churchill, J. M. Kerigan, and Spencer Charters.

REGENT THEATRE A vigorous, action-filled Western drama in the up-to-the-second setting of a modern man-hunt brings Harry Carey, Hoot Gibson, Margaret Callahan. Henry B. Walthall and Tom Tyler to the Regent Theatre to-night in “The Last Outlaw.” This picture tells —with fist fights, hurtling automobile chases, spectacular riding and gun battles —the adventures of an old Western desperado who, twenty-five years after a law-defying escapade, takes to his guns to wipe out city gangsters. Walthall portrays an oldtime two-gun sheriff who, though shunted into an abscure police post for being out-of-date, joins Carey to prove fighters of the old West are a match for to-day’s gangsters when they pit six-shooters against machine-guns. Hoot Gibson and Miss Callahan provide an ardent romance. Miss Callahan, playing the last outlaw’s daughter, whose kidnapping by gangsters sends Gibson out on their trail with Carey and Walthall to smash her captors in their lonely Oklahoma mountain hide-out. The merciless mob leader is characterised by Tyler. Ray Mayer and Harry Jans are his ruthless machine-gun artists, with other important roles being filled by Russell Hopton, Harry Jans, Frank Jenks, Frank M. Thomas, Fred Scott and Maxine Jennings.

“HUMAN CARGO.” Drama with a new wallop, and romance with a new twist, highlight the excitement of “Human Cargo,” to be shown at the Regent Theatre to-night with Claire Trevor and Brian Donlevy featured. “Human Cargo” is a hilarious, thrilling romance between a deb. who wants excitement and a reporter who wants headlines. They get what they’re after as they smash the underworld’s new menace —the smuggling of human beings into the country illegally. Alan Dinehart, Ralph Morgan, Helen Troy, and Rita Cansino are in the exceptional cast, with Miss Trevor and Donlevy. Miss Trevor obtains a job on Dinehart’s paper, and goes with Donlevy to a night club to get a lead to the “higher-ups” running the new racket. Claire designedly walks into a trap, precipitating a wild gun-fight in which the man Donlevy is trailing is killed. Miss Trevor is mistakenly arrested while the'reporter escapes with Rita Cansino a dancer who entered the country illegally. Miss Trevoi’ guides the police to Donlevy’s apartment where they find the girl. They ( take Miss Cansino, and while she is being questioned, Ralf Harolde shoots her and escapes. Miss Trevor reveals Miss Cansino had named the ship on which she came to America. Claire and Donlevy decide to obtain a passage on the boat. As the aliens land, a squad of fake policemen raid the group. Donlevy and Miss Trevor are taken in a car. Donlevy recognises the drivei’ as the gunman, Harolde. Claire and Donlevy turn the tables on their captor and take him to the newspaper office. While Harolde is revealing the identity of the leader, Miss Trevor walks into a trap. The climax finds the reporter rescuing the girl.