STRAND

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 816, 9 November 1929, Page 16

STRAND

“FOX MOVIETONE FOLLIES” A new “blues” song which, seems destined for instant popularity with its first public audition in the William Fox Movietone Follies of 1929, gigantic musical revue and first Follies produced for the screen, is a heart-pulsat-ing melody that will find, an answering throb in the breast of anyone who eve? was alone in a big city. It is called “Big City Blues,’* and it is sung by Lola Lane, Broadway favourite until she was lured from the Great White Way by Fox Movietone. The song is staged simply, with Miss Lane in the role of the lonesome small town girl in a metropolis, standing beneath a street lamp in the snow, singing her lament. There are occasional flashes of joyous holiday crowds, adding tremendously to the dramatic eftect. Miss Lane, before signing a longterm Fox Movietone contract, had scored a sensational success in New York in the short period oil two years. “Discovered” in a small lowa college where she and her sister “harmonised” on college programmes, she was qn instant success in the Greenwich Village Follies. The talking features of the remainder of the programme include the song, “Barber of Seville,” by Richard Bonelli, a U.F.A. gem, a Fox Movietone News and an all-talking comedy, “Mind Your Business.