ENTERTAINMENTS

Manawatu Standard, Volume LVIII, Issue 177, 27 June 1938, Page 2

ENTERTAINMENTS

MAYFAIR THEATRE. "SAN QUENTIN.” Pat O’Brien stars, and such excellent players as Humphrey Bogart, Barton MacLane, Joseph Sawyer and Ann Sheridan appear in supporting roles, in Warner Bros.’ First National melodrama, ‘San Quentin,” now showing at the Mayair Theatre. While the story is laid in and about the famous penitentiary that juts into San Francisco Bay, it is not, the producers give assurance, one of those sorrowful movies about condemned men and last hours and that sort of thing. There is no execution, there is nothing sobby about the picture. It is enlivened by many scenes taken “outside” —even by a San Francisco night club, where Miss Sheridan is a singer who falls in love with O’Brien, who is an ex-army officer just appointed to be Captain of the Yard at San Quentin. It is simply a swiftly-moving melodrama dealing with the prisoners, the lives they lead —some good, some evil, even behind walls —and the officers who guard them. Many of the scenes, it is said, were made at San Quentin itself. Others, done at the Warner studios, lake place in settings copied ’exactly from the original locale. The prison “Yard,” wherein much of the action takes place, was reconstructed on an open space near the studio which covers 112,000 square feet of territory. Naturally, as in all prison stories, there is a dash for freedom by some of the' prison: ers, and plenty of fighting and gunfire. But those things really do happen in prisons, and the producers say that “San Quentin’s” story was fully approved by the officers of the institution. Besides those named, the cast includes such players as Veda Ann Borg, Joseph King, James Bobbins, Gordon Oliver, Garry Owen, March Lawrence and Max Wagner. STATE THEATRE. “ADVENTURES OF MARCO POLO.” Few historic personalities enjoyed a life more significant and romantic than the Marco Polo so few people seem to know, whom Samuel Goldwyn has chosen as the hero of “The Adventures of Marco Polo,” his rollicking adventurous romance now showing at the Theatre. Marco Polo’s journey to the Thirteenth Century Court of the great Kublai Khan in Kambalu, Peiping, had as its object tho development of new trade _ opportunities for the Polo Brothers. Nicolo and Maffeo, -Marco’s father and uncle, who were important merchants in the city of Venice. Thus, as the world's first travelling salesman, Marco set forth for distant Cathay.—a three years’ journey through deserts and mountains, beset every mile or so by brigands and perils unknown to western civilisation. Marco was then 21, a young game-cock skilled in the use of arms, an excellent horseman and athlete, fearless and persevering in tho pursuit of trouble, trade and amours. The Young Polo served Kublai Khan for 17 continuous years, years of tremendous danger among tho barbaric descendants of Ghengis Khan, the greatest and most ferocious of all conquerors. He finally loft as _ tho Khan’s ambassador, charged with delivering the Circassion-Tartar princess, Kogatin, over in marriage to Argon, the elderly Sha of Persia and Eastern India. It is this last and romantic episode in Polo’s career that forms the basis for much of the storv filmed by Goldwyn. AUTHENTIC HISTORY OF HITLER REGIME. Some short time ago, wbcn-lmrcsh was evinced in Europe, the cameras of “The March of Time” were on the spot; and now they give the world a magnificent history of Hitler and his dreams of making Germany once more tho force jt was before the GreatiWar. This film is also screening .. now at. the State. Theatre. In ’V-the v past the cameras of ‘The March of Time”'/have recorded unrest in foreign countries, and have predicted the possible outcome of the troubles. Always they have been right, and have given , a true and unbiassed view, They foresaw the Chinese-Japanese conflict; predicted tho trouble in Spain and Abyssinia; showed the people of Australia what a PanAmerican Air Service would mean, long before it was ever thought of; and now answer the question, “What Will Happen?” in a most impressive manner. METEOR THEATRE. ! ’ “LOVE IS NEWS.’,’ The standardisation that has taken place in a good many of the characters frequently seen on tho screen is best exemplified in the newspaper reporter, a type which Tay Garnett, director of the Twentieth Century-Fox hit. “Love Is News,” now showing at the Meteor Theatre, declares he has done his best to get away from in this comedy of news and publicity. “The trouble with screen papermen,” says Director Garnett, “is that they have taken just one rare type out of the city room and ignored the rest. The cynical, worldly-wise, iconoclastic member of the Fourth Estate is not at all representative of his fellows.” The average reporter, according to Garnett, could quite easily be mistaken for a doctor, banker or business man, but, he adds, if these news-hawks were pictured on the screen as they really are, audiences would be quite disappointed. “However,” declared Garnett, “in ‘Love Is News,’ which stars Tyrone Power, Loretta Young and Don Ameche, we’ve made several step 9 toward realism without sacrificing too much of the romantic stereotype.”