AMUSEMENTS

Grey River Argus, 18 January 1940, Page 12

AMUSEMENTS

Opera Heu»e FINALLY TO-NIGHT: “FIVE OF A KIND.” The Dionne Quintuplets’ latest and best feature “Five Of A Kind,” will be finally screened at the Opera House to-day and to-night. These .five lovely little ladies have grown up now ana are real entertainers .in this hign speed story that races in and onto! New York’s Broadway; alive with wne exciting action and romantic excitement of.newspaper and radio thrills. Others included in the cast are Jean Hersholt, Claire Cesar Romero and Slim Summerville.

NEXT ATTRACTION (Commencing To-morrow): “SAN FRANCISCO.” Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer’s most spectacular hit in film history “San Francisco,” co-starring Jeanette McDonald, Clark Gable and Spencer Tracey, will again thunder across the screen of the Opera House tqpmorrow, • also on Saturday and Monday. This musical romance gives Miss McDonald her widest scope in vocal numbers on the screen, a total of nine presentations, ranging from a solemn hymn to the most beautiful operatic arias. . Gable returns to the vigorous type of role that first elevated him to stardom as a blustering Barbary Coast gambling baron, who has no faith in ahything out his own power and his charm with women. Co-starring with Gable and Miss McDonald is Spencer Tracey in the role of a priest; the cast also includes Jack Holt, Ted Healy, Jessie Ralph and Shirley Ross. San Francisco laid in the colourful period of 1905-1906, its life of gaiety and song, its Barbary Coast prior to and through the disaster that levelled the famous Golden Gate city 30 years ago. The songs contained in the picture are the “Jewel Song,” from Faust; musical excerpts throughout the Faust opera, “The Prison Trio,” with Mephistopheles and Faust; an aria from “La Traviata;” “Love Me and the World is Mine”; “Would You”; “My Heart is Free;” Gounod’s "Ave Maria;” “Nearer My God to Thee;” “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” and “San Francisco.” Other rollicking musical features of the period are contributed by Shirley Ross. The story deals with a homeless girl who finds herself in the boisterous Bar.bary Coast, and who rises from an entertainer in Gable’s gambling resort and cafe, to great heights as a famous opera star in San Francisco’s historic Grand Opera House. Elaborate settings are typical of the period and reproduce many ,of the famous structures destroyed in the 1906 disaster. The catastrophe scenes showing the destruction of the city by fire end earthquakes are the most thrilling shots recorded in motion pictures.

REGENT: Now Showing: “THE LEGEND OF PRAGUE” and “THE GIRL AND THE GAMBLER.”

Of considerable topical interest at the present time is “The Legend of Prague.” It is a Czecho-Slovakian production, but in an English dialogue version, adapted from “The Golem," the famous stage play. Its theme is the persecution of the Jews in Europe, persecution which in the eighteenth century was even more barbarous than it had ever been before or has been since. The screen story, rather harrowing in its details perhaps, gives a terrible picture of the sufferings undergone by the Jews al the hands of a tyrannical oppressor. In the hour of their darkest agony the thoughts of the oppressed turn to a legendary statue in Prague, on which was the inscription, “At the roar of the beast, when the hour is darkest, then shall the secret of the ‘Golem’ be revealed.” The statue, meanwhile, has been stolen and hidden, but at the crucial moment tne necessary invocation is made, ana the statue (a sort of colossal superman) comes to life. The names in the cast are of course quite unfamjliar in this quarter of the globe, but the performances given quickly show that there are stars on the Continent more than the equal of those who shine in Hollywood’s studios. The photography, too, and the whole presentation of the story, especially the moo scenes, is something remarkable and unusual, the pageantry of medieva, Europe lending itself to the spectacular. “The Legend of Prague” will leave an indelible impression on those who see it screened. It was, oi course, produced in Czechoslovakia before the recent crisis, but, with its implications, it is quite easy to see why it has been banned, if report is true, by Hitler.

ASSOCIATE FEATURE. Telling in gay and exciting fashion a story of the Mexican border, Is RKO Radio’s’ “The Girl and the Gambler,” in which Leo Carillo, Tim Holt and Steffi Duna are featured. Carillo is perfectly cast as the swaggering and conceited bandit, and Miss Duna is equally convincing as the spirited little dancer. Tim Holt as the young American gives .a brilliant performance, and an excellent supporting cast includes Donald Mac-i Bride, Chris-Pin Martin and Edward Raquello. LewLanders’ deft direction, Joseph Fields’ screen play from the Willard Mack stage hit, and Producer Cliff Reid’s realistic mountings all combine to make “The Girl and the Gambler” a picturesque and entertaining film.