Gracie Fields’ Merry Musical Comedy Coming

Manawatu Times, Volume 60, Issue 274, 20 November 1935, Page 11

Gracie Fields’ Merry Musical Comedy Coming

ENTERTAINMENT AND TUNEPUL NESS OF “LOOK UP AND LAUGH."

(Regent: Screening Saturday week.) There is a particularly happy flavour about Gracie Fields’ latest film “Look Up and Laugh. ' It is the riotous story of a fight between a town market and a big rival storekeeper.

Basil Dean, too producer and director went to great pains to secure the authenic atmosphere and those who have seen the picture are bound to admit that he has succeeded. It must have been great fun being in the studio when the picture was m production. A reviewer on the set during the shooting of the first sequence tells us that everybody seemed there inside the studio as well as outside. The butcher, the baker, the humbug-maker were all on- the “set.’’ Nearly 100 to be accurate. Most of the “extras" were either wheeling prams or carrying baskets. The motley cro-wd in this pseudo-market-place was indeed a curious assembly. Finery was noticeable for its absenco but there was a good sprinkling of talent about. ,At each stall, somebody of note was to be seen and everybody seems to be talking at once. When they were not easily discernible they were heard 'Volubly' expounding their lines intiTfhe "mike.' ’ The most hilarious sequence were tue market fight scenes, with Gracie leading her band of marketeers into action, while a score of firemen—and policemen—joined in the general melee, xhe policemen had to keep back the crowds of two hundred extras, while the firemen thoroughly drenchect"Gracie Fields with their hoses. Another scene, following a carefully staged " explosion, showed two of tho big cast of comedians, Douglas Wakefield and Billy Nelson, being blown headlong down a flight of steps out of the market door.