ENTERTAINMENTS

Manawatu Standard, Volume LIX, Issue 21, 22 December 1938, Page 3

ENTERTAINMENTS

METEOR THEATRE. “BLUEBEARD’S EIGHTH WIFE.” “Bluebeard’s Eighth Wife,” the Paramount comedy at the Meteor Theatre, brings Claudette Colbert and Gary Cooper together in a new screen partnership to which both 6tars have been looking forward for a number of years. They both own the arrangement to Producer-Director Ernst Lubitsch. who has directed their new comedy of life among Europe’s smart set. Cooper, who broke the long-standing Hollywood tradition that no player of Western parts could succeed in drawing-room roles, explains it this way: “Until Ernst Lubitsch proved to me that I could do comedy and get away with it in ‘Design for Living,’ I just went along in the same rut. But for tho confidence ‘Design for Living’ gave me, I wouldn’t have had the courage to do ‘Mr Deeds.’ To play opposite such a finished actress as Miss Colbert in a gay, rowdy, romantic piece like ‘Bluebeard’s Eighth Wife’ would have been beyond me but for this.” Miss Colbert also is delighted in tho new partnership. Although she worked under Lubitsch before in her recent comedy, “I Met Him in Paris,”’ something always prevented her teaming with Cooper. “Every time I’ve been about to start a picture,” she says, “Gary has been in the midst of another one. It’s been like the traffic lights on 6ome streets. If you start out with red, you’re stuck with red at every intersection right down tho boulevard. Perhaps Gary’s pause to become a father accounted for the adjustment. Anyhow, I’m delighted, and after we finish ‘Bluebeard’ I hope wo can play togother again.”

STATE THEATRE. “GOLDWYN FOLLIES.” Presenting a dazzling array of stars and a variety of talent that staggers the imgaination, “The Goldwyn Follies,” tho glorious tcchnicolour musical extravaganza, marks the first entertainment in Goldwyn’s 25 years of picture-making to carry the producer’s name. Goldwyn invaded every field of entertainment to find stars to aug-' ment the screen cast headed by the suave Adolphe Menjou, the Ritz Brothers, and the beautiful rising young star, Andrea Leeds. From radio he took Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy, tho comedy sensation of the world; Kenny Baker, Jack Benny’s silver voiced romanticist; irrepressible Phil Baker and his accordion; from grand opera, lovely Helen Jepson and the sensational newcomer, Charles Kulhnan; from the world of the dance, the beautiful Zorina and George Balanchine’s American Ballet of the Metropolitan Opera; and from musical comedy goggle-eyed Bobby Clark to clown with petite Ella Logan. Then there are the hand-picked Gorgeous Goldwyn Girls as well as Hollywood’s 12 loveliest and most talented tap dancers; Jerome Cowan, Nydia Westman, Frank Shields and a hundred more who fit into the pattern of one of Ben Hecht’s best stories—a comedy of Hollywood which casts Menjou as a film producer out of touch with his public, and Andrea Leeds as the typical American girl whom he hires as “Miss Humanity” to keep him posted on what tho public wants. “The Goldwyn Follies” has four session at tho State on Friday, at 2 p.m., 5 p.m., 8 p.ni., and 10.30 p.m., and three session on Saturday (Christmas Eve), at 2 p.m., 8 p.m., and 10.20 p.m.