ENTERTAINMENTS

Southland Times, Issue 24055, 20 February 1940, Page 9

ENTERTAINMENTS

REGENT THEATRE “THE FOUR JUST MEN” EDGAR WALLACE SPY DRAMA As is expected, and welcomed, from the pen of Edgar Wallace, the story of “Four Just Men,” which is at present drawing crowds to the Regent Theatre, is full of excitement, drama and suspense, and the action of the first-rate English cast is of a very high level indeed. Leading roles are occupied by Frank Lawton, Hugh Sinclair, Francis Sullivan and Griffith Jones—they are the Four Just Men. An element of romance is provided by Anna Lee. Ellaline Terriss also occupies an important role. The Four Just Men are widely different types. One is an exceptionally fine actor from the West End of London, the second a dictator of London’s women’s fashions, the third an invalid and the fourth a theatrical producer. How they came together is a mystery, but at the time the story opens the Press of three continents is ringing with the echoes of their exploits in protection of the innocent and the suffering. But now the Four Just Men stumble upon something of far, far greater moment—something affecting not a few individual lives, but the fate of a great Empire. It is nothing less than a plot originating somewhere in the East to wreck Britain and break the Empire asunder. The opening scenes give the audience a sample of how the Four Just Men are ever ready and prepared to come to one another’s aid, and the manner in which the invalid is saved from a foreign executioner’s axe by the ingenuity of the West End actor makes an inspiring and apt opening to the film—an appropriate overture to the thrilling sequences to follow.

Each item on the supporting programme is of more than usual interest. “This Place Australia” is presented against a background suggested by the poems of Henry Lawson. “March of the Movies” covers the progress made in the development of the moving pictures from the first crude efforts to the first days of the talkies. “Onward” is the theme of another subject dealing with the Centennial Exhibition, and the newsreel is right up to the minute.

STATE THEATRE WILL HAY COMEDY “ASK A POLICEMAN” The well-known British comedian, Will Hay, ably hindered !by Moore Marriott and Graham Moffatt, has blundered through many Public Services. In the G.B.D. attraction, “Ask A Policeman,” which will be presented at the State at 2.0 and 8.0 today, the three do their best to ruin the local rural constabulary, and here they make an hilarious digression into what they imagine to be the realm of the supernatural. As members of the police force in a village that has had no crime for ten years five weeks and four days, they are faced with the necessity to justify their by no means miserable existence, and to do this they endeavour, blissfully unconscious of the fact that the village is a hot-bed of smuggling, to create an artificial “crime wave.” They soon find that there is a real one in full swing. An old country rhyme, the last line of which they have some understandable difficulty in remembering, forms the basis of the ghostly doings in which a headless horseman is supposed to drive a hearse lit by ghastly lights across the countryside. Although Will Hay and Graham Moffatt are definitely sceptical, Moore Marriott believes it to such a point that he even tells the Chief Constable that when he saw IT he lost his hair and all his teeth fell out in a night! In a wildly hilarious sequence, the three blundering policemen try frantically to escape in their car from the galloping horses and the ghastly driver. The sight of this apparent visitation from another world injects drama into the comedy, and has a logical bearing on the story as it is discovered later that the horse and the horseman are both used to intimidate the local peasantry from inquiring too closely into the nocturnal travels of the gang of smugglers, headed by no less a person than the Squire himself. But the effect on the comic trio is such that they hardly know what they are doing. Special supports complete the programme. Box plans are at Begg’s or State. Telephone 645.

CIVIC THEATRE “WILD AND WOOLLY” “ROMANCE IN PARIS” That Withers girl is on tire loose again out where the West begins, and the West was never so wild as when Jane and her gun-totin’ grandpop, played by Walter Brennan, create pioneer pandemonium on runaway wheels for her grandest Twentieth CenturyFox comedy, “Wild and Woolly,” which is the first attraction on the Civic’s half-price programme screening tonight only at 7.45. Shades of the wild West of Buffalo Bill and Sitting Bull are paled and put to shame when Hollywood’s little Miss Mischief goes to town in the Mesa City Pioneer Day Jubilee. Aided and abetted by the best supporting cast she’s ever had, Jane twirls a rope and rides like a saddleborn veteran as she revels in the “Days of ’49” atmosphere recreated for her by grandpop Brennan. Last year’s Academy award winner for the best performance of an actor in a supporting role, Brennan heads the cast which includes Pauline Moore, Carl “Alfalfa 1, Switzer, Jack Searl, Berton Churchill, Douglass Fowley, Robert Wilcox and Douglas Scott. The feud between Brennan and Churchill is renewed each year when Brennan’s candidacy for Sheriff is always defeated by the political machine run by Banker Churchill. Jane carries on this battle with Jack Searl, the banker’s scion, and Douglas Scott, his snobbish stodge. Jane’s accomplice, more hindrance than help, is the comical banjo-eyed “Alfalfa.” Given a fast pace by Director Alfred Werker, the original screen play by Lynn Root and Frank Fenton plunges the characters into a series of adventures and misadventures, riding runaway trains, getting grandpop into a duel, scaring the wits out of tenderfeet in a graveyard at midnight, chasing gangsters on a careening stage coach, and roping young lovers into romance.

The second feature, “Romance In Paris” a delightful comedy, stars Fernand Gravet, Joan Biondell, Edward Everett Houton, Alan Mowbray, Kenny Baker and Luis Alberin. Civic prices tonight only are 6d and 9d. MAJESTIC THEATRE “BROTHER RAT” AND “STRANGE FACES” TWO GRAND COMEDIES TODAY Warner Brothers’ “Brother Rat,” which will open at the Majestic today, has a most misleading title. First, it is not a gangster

picture, but a rattling good comedy of the . life at the Virginian Military Institute. “Rats” at this establishment are first-year cadets whose privileges are few and rules many. The leading roles in this picture are played by Priscilla Lane, fresh from her triumphs in “Four Daughters,” handsome Wayne Morris, Ronald Regan, Jane Bryan, Johnny Davis and Jane Wyman, while Eddie Albert, who played the part ot the youthful father on the New, York stage, has the same part in this picture. Mirth and mystery are the keynotes in “Strange Faces,” Universal’s comedy mystery thriller which is the associate feature on today’s programme at the Majestic. The latest Universal News will introduce the programme, and plans are on view at H. and J. Smith’s Departmental Store Rice’s Majestic sweet shop and at the Majestic Theatre (telephone 738). HENRI THE GREAT MAGICIAN’S FAVOURITE TRICK “From time immemorial,” says Henri The Great, who will appear for a two night season at the Civic Theatre mencing next Wednesday, night,, conjuring has had her favourite conjurers, and conjurers each his favourite trick. This should be the one which has embraced the widest scope coupled with the greatest effort towards success in its presentation and exploitation. Perseverance is usually crowned with success, but herculean endeavours towards achievement in the realm of magic oftentimes meet with stolid lack of appreciation and many disquieting rebuffs. Therefore I have always thought that the hardest trick to accomplish should be the favourite one. Once in the beginning of my guileless novitiate, my manager nearly wrecked my puerile ambition to dare and do, by brusquely telling me that my favourite trick of the tapping hand was unworthy of my repertoire and icily bade me to eliminate it from my programme. This came as a great blow to my knee-breeches hokus-pokus hopes. I thought then that the Tapping Hand was a good trick, and I have since made a goodly part of the world coincide with my poor opinion. By its absence of cumbersome apparatus, it typifies the highest in legerdemainsimplicity. But the Tapping Hand is not now my favourite trick, my favourite trick today is still the hardest trick to do; one which most magicians essay but few accomplish. That is, the changing of an empty theatre into a crowded house of pleased spectators, and a depleted box office treasury into overflowing coffers of glittering coin—the kind that magicians do not usually catch in the air!” Box plan at Begg’s is now open.