ENTERTAINMENTS

Manawatu Standard, Volume LX, Issue 216, 10 August 1940, Page 3

ENTERTAINMENTS

KOSY THEATRE. ~/rV “SWISS MISS.” Laurel and Hardy reach a new peak ol comedy in ail Alpine sotting, climbing to dizzy heights of mirth in “Swiss Miss,” their now musical film. Their efforts to sell mouse traps to cheese producers, including demonstrations of the /devices, all of which in ingenuity would do credit to Rube- Goldberg, arc sequences as hilarious as have ever eomo to the screen. In success or in despair, their reactions never fail to hit the bell of pure and unadulterated comedy. Romance enters the picture in the persons of Della Lind and Walter Woolf King. Their vocal numbers are well above the average and the music written especially for this production by Phil Chraig possesses warmth and melodic appeal. Miss Lind, dainty and. blonde, is a Viennese star of stage and screen who is making her American debut in “Swiss Miss.”

A scintillating new comedy team comes to the Kosy Theatre to-day in “Lucky Night,” in which Myrna Lov and Robert Taylor make their first appearance together before tho cameras. Interweaving moving heart throbs with uproarious laughter, the story unfolds the accidental meeting and later marital careers of Cora Jordan and Bid Overton. Cora, the spoiled daughter of a millionaire steel magnate walks out on her fourth engagement to hunt for a job. Bill is a playboy down on his luck. Following an accidental meeting on a park bench, they gamble, frolic and fight their way to fortune, get married, quarrel over tho family budget, separate and come together again after a series of mad-as-march-liaru complications as hilarious as they are ■novel.

STATE THEATRE. “MY SON, MY SON.” An unforgettable story, brilliant performances. outstanding direction, and a beautiful production make Edward Small’s film yorsion of Howard Spring’s “My Son, My Son 1” one of the finest pictures of the year. Thus new film drama is , being released by United Artists at the State Theatre to-day. “My Son, My Son !” lias a brilliant array of stars in Madeleine Carroll, Brian Aherne and Louis Hayward, a trio which enhances the picture by flown-to-carth, unforgettable acting. Others who turn in excellent performances include Harry Hall, one of the best contemporary- character actors, Josephine Hutchinson, Laraine Day, Sophie Stewart and Bruce Lester. With liis usual skill for maintaining swift tempo and clear characterisation, Charles Vidor has directed “My Son, My Son 1” with a remarkable sureness of touch and, with unsurpassed clarity of insight. The story of “My Soil, My Son 1” is rich in emotional implications and every daydrama. Jt concerns a father and a ton, and the high hopes that fail to materialise. William Essex's dreams for his son fade into thin air when ho realises that Oliver is a vain and selfish young man, over sophisticated, insincere and cynical. Oliver realises almost too late that' he lias brought misery to the people who have surrounded him with love and understanding. Golden-haired Madeleine Carroll, portraying the rule of Livia Vaynol, has never turned in a screen characterisation to equal her present one in this picture.

METEOR THEATRE. “BLACK FRIDAY.” That rarest of all screen commodities, a new formula for making movies, is credited to Arthur Lubin, young Universal director. Lublin’s formula is to make a horror picture without being horrid, and ho has achieved it in “Black Friday,” the new Boris Karloff-Bcla Lugosi thriller now at the Meteor Theatre. First step in the process was to present Karloff and Lugosi as “themselves,” that is, without tho weird make-up effects they. have used in previous horror .films. Lubin did this through his story, a screenplay by Kurt Siodmak and Eric Taylor, which depends on dramatic situations for its horror rather than on shadowy lighting, sliding panels, hunchbacks, heavy makeup and low-key organ music. Tho story takes place in such un-horrid locales as a college campus, a New York hotel and a swanky night club, complete with chorines. Through these familiar scenes move a strange group of people whose lives ore entangled when Karloff, a surgeon, transplants part of tho brain of a criminal into the brain of a mild little professor. Stanley Ridges plays the professor who becomes a ruthless killer, engaging in the startling total of ten murders. Lugosi is a master criminal, while ollicrs in the cast arc Anne Nagel, Anno Gwynne, James Craig, Edmund MacDonald, Virginia Brissac and Paul Fix.