ENTERTAINMENTS

Manawatu Standard, Volume L, Issue 120, 17 April 1930, Page 3

ENTERTAINMENTS

PALACE TALKIES. “MADAME X” SEASON. In making “Madame X,” Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer’s spectacular all-talking story of the famous 6tago favourite, which is now playing at the Palace Theatre, Lionel Barrymore, the director, worked from a script prepared by Willard Mack, the New York playwright. Every speech was condensed to the least number of words possible, making the action progress at quick speed through the use of diversified episodes, a thing almost impossible in stage practice and a thing never before attempted on the talking screen. The longest speech in it, the defender’s address to tho jury, lasts just ono and one-eighth minutes. Ruth Chatterton essays the titlo role in the present production, a role first made famous by Sarah Bernhardt. “Madame X” will be finally presented at the Palace Theatre to-' night and to-morrow (Good Friday) night. ‘‘SUNNY SIDE UP” COMMENCES ;. SATURDAY. ■ Janet Gaynor and Charles Farrell will score a new sensation on Saturday at the Palace Theatre when they will make their audible screen musical comedy debut in “Sunny Sido Up.” This tuneful bright comedy-drama, written by Dc Sylva, Brown and Henderson, has placed the young Fox movietone stars on a new pinnacle, utterly different but in the same high altitudo as did their performance in "Seventh Heaven.” Farrell, too, is called upon to enact an entirely different sort of role than he’ ever essayed before, and he docs it with a dasli and finish that stamp him as a superb actor. Farrell also bursts forth into song, and if his success in the picture is any criterion the public will demand that ho sing in every production he acts in the future. Included are several of the song hits of tho musical comedy, while Brendel, as a Swedish grocer, carries the burden of the comedy and does several specialties. The song hits in “Sunny Side Up” include “A Talking Picture of You,” “Sunny Side Up,” “I’m a Dreamer,” “Turn on the Heat,” “You Find the Time, I’ll Find tho Place,”, and “You’ve Got Me Pickin’ Petals off .of Daisies.” A fine list of supports is also to be screened. KOSY THEATRE. “TEMPEST” AND “THE SIREN.” “Tempest,” now showing at the Kosy Theatre, is • crammed with action, not to mention plenty of humour, from the opening of tho story, when the star is a peasant officer plunged into the gay life of pre-war Russia, to the final scenes, when he rescues a princess, his sweetheart, from bloodthirsty hordes and escapes with her to a. new life of happiness. Those who like romance will revel in the love scenes played by the star and his beautiful leading lady, Camilla Horn, a blonde who makes her American debut. Barrymore himself nover had a more powerful role. As peasant soldier, dashing officer, lover, prisoner and revolutionary, he imbues his characterisation with the fire atid sincerity of his unrivalled histrionic ability. Tom Moore has the leading masculine role in “The Siren,” which has an exceptional cast which includes Norman Trevor, Jed Prouty and Otto Hoffman. The drama is woven about the adventures of a girl, who unwittingly "became tho tool of a card sharper. She is falsely accused of and condemned to deafh for the murder of a living man. The picture was directed by Byron Haskins. DE LUXE TALKIES. “THE LADY LIES.” In “The Lady Lies,” the all talking comedy drama that came to the Theatre de Luxe last evening, Paramount has produced a powerfully dramatic, but at tho same time absorbingly human romance drama that should add greatly to the prestige of its sponsors, and to that of its featured players, Walter Huston, Claudette Colbert and Charles Ruggles. At the sumfe, time, it will doubtless sturt the upward climb to greater successes of two wonderful'child actors, Patricia Deering and Tom Brown. “The Lady Lies” is tho story of a prominent and successful lawyer who is a widower; and who, to tho disappointment of his two young children and his relatives, falls in love with a woman who is not, in their opinion, of an equal social standing with him. The family powers of intervention are brought to bear, and the plot deals with the weighing in the balance of a true love affair, and a family’s selfish ambitions. After numerous situations, which are full of clever dialogue and tense drama, the romance reaches a logical culmination. The supporting programme includes an all talking comedy, "Weak But Willing”; a. singing act, “Gems From Faust,” and a Paramount Sound News. The final presentation of this programme will take place to-morrow (Good Friday) night. Information regarding booking arrangements appears in our advertising columns. NEW REGINALD DENNY ALL TALKING FILM. Unique in story, rocking with laughs, “something different” in all-talking pictures, “One Hysterical Night,” the Universal comedy starring Reginald Denny, will open at the Theatre de Luxe next Saturday at 2 p.m. “One Hysterical Night” emergesfrom the outpouring of talking pictures as the comedy film that is different, one that is built around an entirely new situation and one in which the dialogue and - plot twists naturally produce howls of laughter. It’s a perfect Denny picture in as much as Denny wrote the story and tho dialogue, with Barnes Craft, director of several of his recent successes, directing. Nora Lane, refreshingly charming, plays opposite Denny. In the picture Denny finds himself, as “Napoleon,” at a fancy dress ball, where those present believe that he is “cuckoo” and really thinks he is “Napoleon.” The merry-makers band against him and precipitate a scries of dramatic and humorous situations. It is there that he meets his “Josephine,” Nora Lane, -who also belives that he is deranged. How he establishes his sanity makes a spirited and entertaining story. With Denny and Miss Lane in the cast are E. J. Ratcliffe, Fritz Feld, Slim Summerville, Jules Cowls, Joyzclle, Walter Brennan, Henry Otto, Margaret Campbell,' Peter Gawthorne, D.R.O. Hatswell. Rolfe f-fcidan and Lloyd Whitlock.