ENTERTAINMENTS

Greymouth Evening Star, 15 December 1944, Page 7

ENTERTAINMENTS

OPERA HOUSE.—To-night: “I Thank ■ You” and “The Leopard Man.”

He’s coming! Who? The King of Laughter, Arthur Askey, in the comedy that has been a riot of fun wherever it has been shown, “I Thank You,” showing at the Opera House. The story deals with a couple of unlucky entertainers who masquerade as a cook and a footman in order to get into the house of a titled exmusic hall star and persuade her to back a show. Askey makes the most of the dame impersonating sequence. The action starts in a tube shelter and ends Vith one, complete with concert. Big hearted Arthur is grandly supported by well-known stars. ‘■‘THE LEOPARD MAN” Top-bracket fare for fans who like chills and thrills with their screen romance is “The Leopard Man, showing at the Opera House, with Dennis O’Keefe, Margo and Jean Brooks in leading roles. Laid in a colourful little resort town in New Mexico, the story begins with the escape of a black leopard and continues with mysterious nocturnal slayings of young pretty worsen, seemingly by the sinister beast. But, hero O’Keefe asks himselt, if the jungle cat is doing these killings, why does he always choose lovely girls tor the victims? Why not men, children, sheep? So he asks the girl he loves, a blonde cafe entertainer, to serve as bait in a trap he sets for whatever it is man or beast. It can’t be done without subjecting the girl to grave peril but she loves and trusts him, so she agrees. And then comes the hair-raising climax!

REGENT THEATRE. — To-night: Oberon and Aherne starred as Heroic Lovers.

The dramatic story of a courageous woman who marries within enemy’s gates in order to save her country, 1 even though her heart was with her brave young Commando, is promised patrons of the Regent Theatre in “First Comes Courage.” Miss Oberon and Mr. Aherne. in the leading roles, portray lovers who are forced to put their personal lives aside for the exigencies of war, snatching brief moments together when duty to country permits. She is a woman of high birth in a conquered town in Norway, he a British Commando Captain. They had loved before the war—a love interrupted by the world conflict. Hated by her townspeople, who suspect her of being a Quisling, the girl is, in reality, an important member of the Norwegian underground. She pretends to be in love with the Major of the German garrison in order to get vital information which she passes through the

underground to London. When the Nazi begins to suspect her, her true love, the Commando, is sent to her little Norwegian village to dispose of the Major.