The SCREEN and its STARS

Southland Times, Issue 21197, 25 September 1930, Page 11

The SCREEN and its STARS

(By

“Columbine”.)

THE REGENT. Now Showing: Cecil B. de Mille’s “Dynamite” (Conrad Nagel, Kay Johnson, Julia Faye, Charles Bickford). Saturday: “The Aviator” (Edward Everett Horton, Patsy Ruth Miller). Coming Attractions: “Free and Easy” (Buster Keaton, Anita Page, Robert Montgomery) ; “Anna Christie” (Greta Garbo, Charles Bickford, Marie Dressier) ; ‘Temple (Kenneth MacKenna, Marceline Day); “The Green Goddess” (George Arliss); “Caught Short” (Polly Moran and Marie Dressier) ; “The Girl Said No” (William Haines); Fox Movietone Follies of 1930. To-night and to-morrow mark the close of the Regent’s extended season ot “Dynamite,” Cecil B. de Mille’s first talking picture, which M.-G.-M. have released from Jeannie MacPherson’s story. Mr de Mille, who gave “The Ten Commandments,” “King of Kings” and “Male and Female” to the world, to mention only a few of his big productions, has again staged a spec, tacular drama contrasting life in a mining town with the heady fastness of New York’s ultra-smart set. “Dynamite" owes much to Kay Johnson, the Broadway stage star who plays the part of Cynthia Crothers who, in order to comply with the terms of a will by which she will inherit several millions, marries a convict condemned to be hanged and suddenly finds that there are some things which all the money in the world cannot straighten. Miss Johnson gives a very fine performance, with Charles Bickford as Derk, the miner, and Conrad Nagel as the suave athlete and man-about-town. Edward Everett Horton, the noted comedian, will be seen at the Regent on Saturday in Warner Brothers’ all-talking motion picture in which he is the operator of wildly careening aeroplanes, engaged in performing stunts of the most hair-raising description. Horton plays the role of a prosaic author, w'ho, having consented to the use of his name on a book dealing with aerial exploits during the war, finds himself forced to make good. Never having been in an aeroplane in his life, he is forced to qualify as a reckless flyer to win the hand and heart of the girl he loves. The result is an uproarious comedy which incidentally is said to bring to the screen the most spine-tingling and laugh-jerking exhibitions of aerial acrobatics ever shown in motion pictures. Horton is supported in “The Aviator,” by a cast which includes Patsy Ruth Miller, Johnny Arthur, Lee Moran, Edward Martindel, Kewpie Morgan, Armand Kaliz, Phillips Smalley and William Norton Bailey. “The Aviator” is based on the play

by James Montgomery. Robert Lord and Arthur Caesar did the screen adaptation. Roy del Ruth directed. Next week M.-G.-M.’s all-talking comedy, “Free and Easy” will be shown at the Regent, directed by Edward Sedgwick. The picture, a satire of Hollywood studio life, makes use of such well known screen names as Buster Keaton, who makes his talking and singing debut in the production, Anita Page, Trixie Friganza, Robert Montgomery, Edgar Dearing, David Burton. William Collier, Snr., Cecil B. de Mille, Fred Niblo, Dorothy Sebastian, William Haines, Karl Dane, Marion Shilling, Lionel Barrymore, and Lottice Howell. John Wayne has been picked to play the featured role in Fox Movietone’s “No Favours Asked,” based on a story by Paul Leceister Ford. Also in the cast of the film which Alfred Warner will direct, will be Dixie Lee, Warren Hymer, Francis McCoy and George (“Red”) Corcoran. “Illicit,” the play which Warners will mate first as a photoplay and then as a stage production in New York, will have James Rennie in the leading part in place of Neil Hamilton, as previously announced. Barbara Stanwyck as well as Charles Butterworth, Joan Blondell and Grant Mitchell will also be in the production. The Gaumont-Gainsborough talking and musical version of Ivor Novello’s famous play, “A Symphony in Two Flats” (the play in which Mr Novello scored a triple success as author, actor and musician) is hailed in London as a “British talkie triumph.” Benita Hume plays the role of the musician’s wife assisted by a West End cast and Jack Payne and his 8.8. C. Dance Orchestra, Reginald Denny, who played the male lead in Cecil B. de Mille’s “Madam Satan,” and who will also appear onposite Grace Moore, Metropolitan Opera singer, in her first starring vehicle, has been signed to a new long term contract with M-G-M. Denny’s' first assignment under his new contract is the male lead in “Those Three French Girls” which Harry Beaumont will direct. Karl Dane and George K. Arthur have begun the first of a series of six two-reel comedies for the Larry Darmour Productions. “Men Without Skirts” is the title of this opus. Others of the series include "Broken Wedding Bells,” “Dum-bells in Derbies,” “Lime Juice Nights,” “Dizzy Dates” and “Knights, Before Xmas.’ Louise Fazenda has also been engaged for six short comedies. The Fairbanks plans for the picture this summer are still as airy as when Doug, set off for England with the golfing players some six weeks ago, but Mary Pickford is busy salvaging what she can from her' costly venture with “Forever Yours.” It appears that Edgar Selwyn will now take the baton' released at Miss Pickford’s request by Marshall Nielan so dramatically a week or-so ago’ after the picture was more than three-quarters done. “The Covered Wagon” and “The Big Parade” were both pictures that grew to epic proportions after the original plans had undergone amplification, and so it may be that Miss Pickford’s wellestablished business reputation will be more definitely proved than ever before. It is an interesting coincidence that in Douglas Fairbanks Jr.’s sketch of Miss Pickford in the current Vanity Fair there is a prophetic statement to the effect that if she ever found her work wanting in any way she would be the first to advocate scrapping the whole picture and starting afresh, a thing she has never; done, however, although "Forever Yours” was abandoned.

THE MAJESTIC. Now Showing: "Half Way to Heaven” (Charles Rogers, Jean Arthur, Paul Lukas). Saturday: “All Quiet on the Western Front.” "Half Way to Heaven,” the screen drama now showing at the Majestic, was taken, from a story by Henry L. Gates and directed for Paramount by George Abbott one of Hollywood’s sr.nest and most humanizing directors. Charles (Buddy) Rogers and Jean Arthur, who, from all accounts is rapidly becoming one of the personages of the screen, are the featured players in this story of the circus which is strongly reminiscent of that fine German work "Variety,” yet the outstanding performance is accredited to Paul Lukas as the murderous acrobat who is hopelessly in love with a girl in his troupe. Helen Ware, Edna West, Lucille Williams, Guy Oliver, Oscar Apfel, Irvin Bacon and Richard K. French are also in the large cast. Saturday afternoon at the Majestic sees the Invercargill premiere of “All Quiet on the Western Front,” the talking picture version of Erich Maria Remarque’s book, hailed almost unanimously by English and American critics alike as the finest thing yet presented on the audible screen. Here is the extract from the opinion of one of the finest international ! critics I know of: “The talented Mr Lewis | Milestone’s brilliant war drama could belong only to the motion picture. Its method, its quality, its aesthetic virtues, its entire appeal are definitely of the cinema, and they could not possibly have been secured in any other dramatic medium. ‘All Quiet on the Western Front,’ as Mr Milestone managed it, is by no means a photographed stage play and, though it is strikingly faithful to the spirit and substance of the original, it is never just the routine following of a novel’s outline. It is, as we used I to say in the good old days, definitely cinematic, and for that blessing there is every reason to believe that the subordination of dialogue deserves much of the credit. Maxwell Anderson and George Abbott, who made the adaptation did admirably, if less than brilliantly, in the arrangement of the ; speeches, but the chief virtue of their work is its modesty. The talk is never ostentatious. it never gets in the way. Always it is subordinated to pictorial requirements. Always it is willing to retire unobtrusively into tho background, providing an accompaniment to the camera drama, rather than attempting to dominate the show. ‘All Quiet’ is, of course, the first real anti-war picture made in America, it being one of the ironic things about ‘Journey’s End’ that despite its fine indignation about the ravages of battle, its gallantry and courageous spirit of sacrifice gave the war, despite all of its author’s intentions, a cruel but unescapable glamour. It concentrated on the unostentatious nobility of its characters and, although Mr Sheriff undoubtedly wanted to express his horror over the waste of such admirable people, the actual result was to make one wonder if there mightn’t be something fine in a struggle that allowed their poetic. qualities to emerge. ‘AU Quiet' escapes that danger by concentrating on the physical hideousness of war. There is in it no possibility for finding carnage romantic. It seems to me that Mr Lewis Ayres’s performance as the central figure of'the drama is excellent. He is neither a striking player or an outstanding personality, but for those very reasons the quiet sincerity of his work becomes all the more impressive and he is not an actor giving a fine impersonation of distress, but merely any sensitive boy dying obscurely for what was supposed to be his country’s cause. There is a heart-breaking moving portrayal by Ben Alexander of the wounded boy W’ho prizes his boots, and Raymond Griffith’s bit as the dying Frenchman is not far from unforgettable. Particularly good are Louis Wolheim, Slim Summerville and John Wray also. But ‘AU Quiet’ is essentially a director’s picture, and, heaven be praised, Lewis Milestone was the director.” 'This from a man who distributes praise very sparingly. The Invercargill season at the Majestic is limited to four nights and four matinees.

Two well-known stage stars make their debut in “Lord Byron of Broadway,” M.-G-M's all-talking comedy with music. The stars are Charles Kaley, Broadway juvenile, recently of “Earl Carroll’s Vanities,” and Ethelind Terry, for three years star of Ziegfeld’s “Rio Rita.” Also featured in this production arc Marion Shilling, of “Wise Girls,” Cliff Edwards, better known as “Ukelele Ike,’’ Gwen Lee and Benny Rubin. Universal has at last cleared up the legal tangle surrounding the picture rights to “The Cat and the Canary” (which Laura la Plante did some years ago) and will start production shortly with Helen Twelvetrees in the main part. The film version is to be known as “The Cat Creeps,” and besides Miss Twelvetrees others in the cast will be Lilyan Tashman, JeanPlersholt, Keil Hamilton, Montagu Love, Theodore von Eltz and Purnell Pratt. Rupert Julian will direct. Lew Ayres - , who made such a good impression by his work in “All Quiet on the Western Front” is to play opposite Lupo Velez in “East is West.” Carl Laemmle Jr. who picked Ayres, then practically unknown, for the leading role in “All Quiet on the Western Front,” believes that “East is West” will add much to the boy’s popularity and give him opportunities for acting along an entirely different line. Universal has re-engaged Herman Rosse, who created the modernistic sittings for “King of Jazz” to design the Oriental backgrounds for “East is West.” , A NEW ROLE.

The Hollywood studios are in a constant state of readjustment to suit changing needs, and one of the most important . and far-reaching of the ’ new requirements is tho making of talking pictures in foreign languages. Small groups of foreign actors are being j assembled in various studios and many of the already established players

with linguistic accomplishments arc extending their borders by working in two or three languages. One of the most interesting twists of the new ordering is putting Ramon Novarro in the position of director for the first time. Mr Novarro is taking to his new work with surprising alacrity. He sits all day at a desk, a very unromantic desk in a bare little office and interviews endless applicants for positions in the picture he is about to put through its paces. Having just finished “The .Singer of Seville”—its title is being changed to the lurid and laborious “Call of the Flesh,” quite against Mr Novarro’s wishes—M-G-M has decided to film this story of a young opera singer .who through failure finds success in' the star’s native tongue. As a finale in the picture Mr Novarro sings the famous “Ridi Pagliacci." At another point in the picture he dances a Spanish number with Rene Adoree that again recalls the famous tango that Valentino did with such aplomb in “The Four Horsemen.” Many amusing incidents come to pass during a session as director, and Ramon Novarro has had his good share in getting ready for the big event of a talking picture into his own hands for the first time and handling it as if it were one of the musical numbers that he stages in his own private theatre. As the whole affair is being carried -through in Spanish, he will enjoy comparative immunity from the official studio interference and supervision that so often wreck the artistic intent.of a director.