LAUGHS ALL THE WAY

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 376, 9 June 1928, Page 14

LAUGHS ALL THE WAY

BEERY AND HATTON AT THE REGENT

Somebody has said, 'the most wasted of our days is that on which we have not laughed.” It has a savour of wisdom about it. Judged by the standard it sets up, Auckland will have little excuse for wasting its nights this week.

The New Regent has evidently taken care to provide a bill, in which the serious patches are as scarce as swimmers at Dixieland baths. It is a big assembly of potential laughs, strung together on another Beery-Hatton feature, “Wife-Savers,” and on a Clyde Cook comedy. The only chance for the audience to ease its sides comes when Mr. Arthur G. Frost and his orchestra play “Three Blind Mice” in the manners of Handel, Liszt, Tchaikowsky, and other old masters, and even then it has to chuckle. It Yvould take a bad lapse of memory to make one forget the wily tars of "We’re in the Navy Now,” and the aviators of "Now We’re in the Air.” Wallace Beery, formerly one of the best of the screen "heavies,” suddenly took Raymond Hatton under his wing and the couple began to produce the funniest comedies seen for years. "Wife-Savers” is the latest and.the two comedians have not quite deserted the American Expeditionary Force. Beery has his first appearances as a "real dough-boy,” a pounder of dough for the ovens somewhere “behind the front,” while Hatton struts in the glory of a second-lieutenant’s uniform, demanding salutes from every private. Beery, whose wife-saver name is “Looie Hozennozzle,” finds his feet when the armistice comes and with a Mills bomb he destroys the campkitchen for ever. The girls of the village have no time to spare for the common privates and Looie purloins Hatton’s uniform and parades in the street as if he was constrained in a straight jacket. The garments are so remarkably tight that he cannot raise his arm to the salute and there follow some delightfully ludicrous incidents. But the real fun of the picture begins when “C.ooie,” left behind to save the lieutenant’s girl from the clutches of an amorous general, has to work for his living as a guide to tourists over the Swiss Alps. On the death of his predecessor, he becomes "Looie the Fourteenth,” with the most magnificent yodel in the land. The general’s attentions become so marked that the girl Collette (Sally Blane) is forced to ask “Looie” to protect her by marrying her. Things are brought to a climax when the lieutenant returns and vows to kill “Looie” as an unfaithful servant.

Beery and Hatton are vj rth going a long way to see in their latest and best fun-picture, "Wife-Savers.”

When a man marries a woman he presumes to be a wealthy widow, and finds that her divorced husband, a professional wrestler, is the "star boarder,” what is the best thing to do? Clyde Cook finds himself in this quandary in an excellent comedy. Moreover he is forced to work in order to pay the alimony which goes to the wrestler.

There are some good supports, including a scenic picture of mountaineers doing impossible things o:n the Rockies and interesting view's of the making of ensilage in silos, a new' branch of farm life here.

Mr. Leslie V. Harvey plays the Toreador Song from “Carmen,” and Schumann’s "Traumerei,” on the mighty Wurlitzer splendidly.