FILMS & PLAYERS

Southland Times, Issue 24757, 30 May 1942, Page 3

FILMS & PLAYERS

When Robert Young, Eleanor Powell, Lionel Barrymore and Ann Sothern are assembled in a musical comedy which has the music supplied by George Gershwin and Jerome Kern something good is bound to come from it. And “Lady Be Good,” opening today at the Regent Theatre, is splendid entertainment. A middling-successful song-writer meets a waitress. Suddenly and unexpectedly she shows a rare talent for attaching words to his music, and a partnership is born. After four years the business partnership becomes

Alexandre Dumas’ famous novel, “The Corsican Brothers,” has been brought to the screen, and is now showing at the State Theatre today. Douglas Fairbanks, jun., and Ruth Warrick are the stars, and a brilliant supporting cast is headed by Akim Tamiroff, H. B. Warner and Henry Wilcoxon. Like all the Dumas stories, it is packed with action. It deals with the vendetta between two Italian families, the Colonnas and the Franchis, whose battles were fought in the days when quarrels were in-

“The Farmer’s Wife,” screen version of the famous stage play by Eden Phillpotts, is now showing at the Majestic Theatre. Village courtship is the theme, and the many hilarious situations are ably presented by a cast of foremost British screen players, headed by Basil Sydney and Wilfrid Lawson. The story follows the successive efforts of Sam Sweetland, widower and farmer of Devon, to bring three local ladies to the altar —efforts which are unavailing until his courage with a runaway bull

a marital one, but the marriage does not follow the soft words and sweet music that the young couple compose so successfully. Divorce follows with no one regretting the separation more than Rober Young and Ann Sothern. After a series of chance meetings, some singing in tender vein, and some whirlwind dancing by Eleanor Powell, they come together again and are remarried. But more quarrels follow and it is only the wise intervention of Lionel Barrymore as the divorce court judge that prevents a second divorce.

evitably settled with sword and dagger. The Baron Colonna, a picturesque villain, believes that he has wiped out all his enemies at a birthday feast. But 20 years later a young man turns up from nowhere and begins to eliminate members of the Colonna family with a Franchi dagger. The newcomer has been reared by Corsican bandits, and follows his career of vengeance with deadly purpose until romance intervenes. This is a picture in the grand manner, full of colour and adventure, and moving at a rapid pace to its spectacular climax.

not only stamps him as a man among men, but makes him realize that an ideal wife is close at hand in the person of Araminta, his quiet and efficient housekeeper. Basil Sydney, who plays the part of Sam Sweetland, and Wilfrid Lawson, as his handyman, are really outstanding. Others who provide excellent portraits of English rustic life are Betty Warren, Enid StampTaylor, Viola Lyel, Nora Swinburne, Patricia Roc and Michael Wilding. The picture is regarded as one of the best comedies to come from a British studio.