lavish Romance Depicting Love Versus Career

Manawatu Times, Volume 63, Issue 39, 16 February 1938, Page 11

lavish Romance Depicting Love Versus Career

“MAYTIME” TRIUMPH TOR UNIQUE DUAL STARDOM

(Regent: Screening Saturday.) Splendid in every sense of th 9 arord is Metro-Gold wyn-Mayer’s lrst lavish musical offering of 1937. ‘Maytime ” with Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy in the starring roles.

A description of the original theme would be superfluous to veterans of the theatre, but it may be written here without fear of contradiction that the studio has gone far and beyond any beauty which the stage attained. “Maytime ” was a musical piece of gorgeous proportions when Kida Johnson Young’s play was on the boards and it closely approaches the status of a musical masterpiece on the screen.

The skilful adaptation was made by Noel Langley. The songs were written by Sigmund KombVg, composer of the original Broadway score, and also by Herbert Stothart who has composed the first film operetta, "Czaritza, ’’ which provides a lovely sequence in the picture.

Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy have not been seen together on the screen for a year. They rose to n unique dual stardom in * ‘Naughty Marietta’ * and then in “Rose Marie.”

In the supporting cast of “Maytime,” John Barrymore plays a picturesque role as the temperamental impresario, his first since the memorable “Romeo and Juliet,” which was one of the sensational pictures of 1930. There is a newcomer in the cast, Lynne Carver, a delicately beautiful young singer from the Kentucky Blue Grass regions who Mugs and acts unusually well. She and Tom Brown provide the juvenile romance in the story. In love with Nelson Eddy, a youm? singer, Jeanette MacDonald, an opera star, actuated by a mistaken sense of duty, marries John Barrymore, the impresario, to whom she owes her career. When circumstance brings her and the singer together again, they realize that their love is stronger than before. Mad with insane jealously the husband kills the singer. The tragedy answers the problem of the younger girl who is drawn between a choice of love and a