ENTERTAINMENTS

Manawatu Standard, Volume LX, Issue 166, 13 June 1940, Page 3

ENTERTAINMENTS

STATE THEATRE. “SLIGHTLY HONOURABLE.” _ Rated one of the season’9 most sophisticated and amusing film stories of scandal in high places, Walter Wanger’s “Slightly Honourable,” with a cast headed by Pat O’Brien, Edward Arnold, Ruth Terry, and Broderick Crawford,, shows today at the State Theatre through United Artists release. It was directed by Ta-y Garnett. This is a picture that strikes along, two entertainment fronts, coupling a strong dramatic plot with a smart comedy theme, and scoring successfully in both departments. Cast on the Wanger theory of “the best available players for even the smallest roles.” the film feature'' a line-up of supporting talent ' that includes Alan ’Dinehart, Claire Dodd, Phyllis Brooks, Janet Beecher, Bernard Nedcll, Douglas Dumbrille, Eve Arden, Douglas Fovvley, .John Sheehan and many others. It introduces a new personality to.local audiences. Ruth Terry, the “Little Cupcake” of Hollywood. Miss Terry is the 18-year-old actress Wanger pulled out of nowhere and placed, in the leading role opposite Pat O’Brien. Although this is her first major screen role, advance reports claim the Irish miss handles her assignment like a veteran, and more than holds her own in the face of real acting competition. Ruth is cast as Ann Seymour, a vivacious and lively night club entertainer, who adopts Pat O’Brien as “her man” when lie rescues her from a man-handling admirer. As John Webb, lawyer and suave man-about-town, Pat O’Brien is seen in a decidedly different type of role.

MAYFAIR THEATRE. “STAND UP AND FIGHT.” Presenting a new screen triumvirate of Wallace Beery, Robert Taylor and Florence Rice, “Stand Up and Fight,” outdoor action drama depicting the fight between the railroad and the stagecoach lines in the 1850’s, is now showing at the Mayfair Theatre. Continuing a series of vigorous fighting roles, Taylor appears as a bankrupt young Maryland aristocrat forced to go to work for the stagecoach line managed by Beery and owned by Miss Rice. All the elements of the ' most exciting Western are embodied in the story, which presents a period and locale new to the screen. When a couple of imaginative adolescents set to find a husband for a girl’s mother, anything can happen and does in “Listen, Darling,” which is a story embracing just that situation. It shows to-day at the Mayfair Theatre/ Featuring Freddie Bartholomew and Judy Garland with Mary Astor as the mother whose romance they attempt to guide, it is a gem of adolescent nonsense with laughs galore, interrupted only by choice serious bits that 1 provide relief with pathos and effective tugs at the heart strings. Alan Ilale, Walter Pidgcon and Gene Lockhart form the trio of would-be suitors who fall victim to the plans of Freddie and Judy and whnt they go through is plenty. The picture gets off to a terrific pace when the kids, in their eagerness to get Mary away from the. town banker (Lockhart), lock Mary in a trailer and “kidnap” her.

, METEOR THEATRE. “COMET OVER BROADWAY.” “Comet Over Broadway,” the Warner Bros, drama which is now showing at the Meteor Theatre, was adapted from Faith Baldwin’s Cosmopolitan Magazine story by Mark Hellinger and Robert Buckner, an array of writing talent such as is' seldom assembled on one picture. Kay Francis heads the east of “Comet Over Broadway,” .which includes such brilliant players as Tan Hunter, John Lite!, Minna Gombcl, Donald Crisp, the capable little ninetyear-old Sybil Jason, and ■ many others. Busby Berkeley, who recently guided the production of “Garden of the Moon.” directed. The. title of this picture may be taken quite literally, too, as the highly dramatic story deals with the comet-like career of an actress, who, at the height of her greatest fame, gives it up to make amends to the husband who she has wronged. Posed against a background that shifts from a small midwestern town, through a series of .up and downs where the actress gets her first stago experience, on to London where she first gains fame, back , to Broadway and the bright lights which burn all too briefly ’for her and back to the old .homo town, the story moves swiftly and surely to its powerful dramatic climax. Thrilling action is the. keynote of the second full-length feature, “Invisible Stripes,” which has in the starring roles such popular players as George Raft, William Holden, Humphrey Bogart, Jane Byran and Flora Robson.