PRINCESS AND TIVOLI

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 336, 23 April 1928, Page 13

PRINCESS AND TIVOLI

“THE CIRCUS WAGON” The first feature of the programme at present being shown at the Princess and Tivoli Theatres is “Th ( e Circus Wagon,” starring Ken Maynard. Ken Maynard was for years a star member of Barnum and Bailey and Ringling Bros, tent shows, and now he is appearing in a motion picture that is an authentic story of the big tops. “The Circus Wagon,” has however, a Western background. The story involves a small one-ring circus travelling through Montana and Wyoming in the early days of the West when none of the big Eastern tent shows came west of the Rockies. This was the heydey of the smaller ones, who played a certain territory year in and year out; to keep faith with their public was almost a religion. They fought the elements and old Mother Nature herself in order to meet their play dates.

It deals not only with the romantic glamour that always accompanies a tent show, but with the struggles and trials these people of the sawdust trail endured. The entire plot has been packed with the daring and thrilling stunts for which Ken has, become world-famous. The pranks that aviators would take time to play on each other when they knew that in a few minutes they would be facing almost certain death, are vividly portrayed in “The Lone Eagle,” the second feature on the programme, featuring Raymond Keane and Barbara Kent. The story describes the adventures of a young American who is attached to a unit of the Royal Flying Corps. It is a tremendous drama of fighting planes and life at the front, and contains a particularly thrilling episode when alone he faced the threatening black war birds of the enemy. He had bluffed to his sweetheart that he was an ace. And now it might cost him his life to make good. It’s thrilling in a stupendous way. The great flying epic of the Allied air forces!