Her Third Try

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 86, 2 July 1927, Page 22

Her Third Try

FLOIE ALLAN SETS OUT FOR ’FRISCO BUT ENDS AS LEAD IN ‘‘TIP TOES.”

ACTRESS CANCELS TRIP Floie Allen has not left Australia after all. At the last minute she cancelled her berth and walked off the Sonoma into the lead of “Tip Toes” in Sydney.

This is Miss Allen’s third attempt to ;ry her fortune abroad, but on every occasion she has cancelled her trip :o join a new show. One day last week Miss Allen said jood-bye to all her friends, ate a fareveil luncheon, took a few farewell teas, and packed

her trunks preparatory to sailing on the Sonoma, to try her luck abroad. But the following morning, instead of taking a taxi for the boat, she went to Her Majesty’s .for a quick iuncli rehearsal of “Tip Toes,” in which, owing to the indisposition of Eliza-

betli Morgan, she

will play lead for the rest of the season.

Floie Allen is a young Australian who has made a rapid rise, but she has never had the principal role in a big musical production, so following in the footsteps of Clarice Hardwick, Josie Melville and other J.C.W. stars, she was making for New York and London.

Tyrone Power, the English actor, who is known L . moving picture as well as stage appearances, arrived in New York recently, and is, according to report, recruiting members for a repertory company he will lead on a tour of the world.

Judith Anderson, who crashed in “The Green Hat,” the Arlen play, in Melbourne, says she will never return to Australia. Her contract with David Belasco in America will be resumed in August, and slie recently received a letter from him, saying he has had a play specially written for her. London will see Judith in due course, and she hopes also to play in France.

At His Majesty’s, Melbourne, “Rose Marie,” probably the most colourful of all muscal comedies, still goes on every night with undiminshed popularity. Stephanie Deste, as Wanda, provides an exotic appeal, despite the snowcovered surroundings. The totem ballet is still one of the wonders of stageland.

Barrie’s “Little Mary” was presented at the King’s Theatre, Melbourne, by the Repertory Theatre players under the direction of Gregan McMahon. He played the role of the old Irish druggist, Terence Reilly/ “Little Mary” ran for seven nights. On July 5 Pirandello’s “Six Characters In Search of an Author” will be produced for the first time there. It will run for four nights.

There was another Miss Moncrieff in the Australian theatre some years ago, for Eileen Sparks, now in “The Ringer” at the Royal, Melbourne, called herself Mona Moncrieff when she first appeared on the stage. That was in Newcastle, New South Wales, where she was born. Afterwards she toured with a stock company, playing parts of all kinds. Tait and Williamson engagements in the capitals followed.

Erich von Stroheim believes that cutters as well as actors need the stimulation of music while they go about their work. In his studio at the Associated Studios that serves also as a cutting-room, Von Stroheim has an electric phonograph installed, and he listens to melody while he snips away at “The Wedding March.” “The Wedding March,” written, directed and acted by Von Stroheim, will be released by Paramount-Famous-Lasky.

Tophners are a feature of the J. C. ■Williamson Celebrity Vaudeville Company, which will open at His Majesty’s Theatre on July 19. The bill contains artists who are world-famous, not one, but many. Chief interest lies in the first appearance in New Zealand of Dick Henderson, the comedian. Others on the bill are Rich and Adair, Valencia, Marie Lawton, Joseph Belmont’s canary orchestra, the Zengas, direct from Pans, the Lee Sisters, Colin Crane, the baritone, and Billie Lockwood.

A Leeds (England) repertory company that started operations recently began with “The Green Go«ddess,” and contiuued with “A Bill of Divorcement,” “Caesar’s Wife,” “The Circle” —good plays that are nevertheless -welltried “box office” successes. If an audience can be found, it is hoped to attempt later in the season the slightly harder busines of Ibsen, Chekhov, and Dostoievsky. The motto of the company is an unimpeachable one. In the prospectus are found the words: “Our prices are very low, and our standard is very high.”

“I have never been able to understand why I enjoy such extraordinary popularity,” said George Bernard Shaw, when he was greeted with a storm of cat-calls and hisses by medical students at the annual meeting of the anti-vivisectionists in London recently. Holding that vivisectors must observe the moral restraint to which the rest of the community was subjected, Shaw said: “Suppose I put a person on a table, cut him up, put the pieces in a trunk, and took it to Victoria Station, what would happen when it was discovered? No one would dream of saying I was exempt from the subsequent proceedings. When, however, a person dies on the operating table there is no inquest. Medical science claims an immunity no other profession claims. We say immunity of that kind is generally abused.” WJien Shaw was comparing experiments in physics with those in anatomy one medical student pretended to be sick. “I think,” said Shaw, “some very young student thought when I said physics I meant physic.”

It may not appear to be, and indeed it is not, a sign of great vitality in the Paris Theatre that it should have to go abroad to find its plays, and to the Parisian playwright of 20 years ago, who always sold his play for translation into English on the evening of the repetition generale, it would have seemed particularly humiliating that London should be furnishing most of the material. A translation of “Outward Bound” has been one of the successes of the season, and has only just come to an end at Louis Jouvet’s Comedie des Champs-Elysees, where he has replaced it by a trans-» lation from the Russian—Gogol’s cen-tury-old but still modern comedy of pompous officialdom, “The Inspector General.” Jane Alarnac, at the Theatre de la Madeleine, is still appearing successfully in a translation of Somerset Maugham’s “Rain.” Pitoeff, at the Theatre des Arts, has just revived Bernard Shaw’s “St. Joan” as a sure card, while Lugne-Poe is filling his theatre by putting “The “Doctor’s Dilemma” once more into the programme. At the Daunou Jane Renouardt has produced a translation of Jerome K. Jerome’s “Fanny,” in which she not only appears to please the Parisian public with its very simple humours—the French expect to find a certain touch of childish ingenousness in anything written in England—but has perhaps sounded the knell of the short skirt fashion by appearing in a long and clinging dress of the ’eighties but with the hair of to-day.