FAME IN LONDON

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 1076, 13 September 1930, Page 26

FAME IN LONDON

Success of Australians On the English Stage THEATRE SLUMP DOES GOOD With news of the theatrical successes of Australians abroad, Tom Holt, of the London organisation of J. C. Williamson, Limited, has arrived in Melbourne. “In ‘The Love Race,’ a highly successful musical comedy now running at the Gaiety Theatre,” said Mr. Holt “Madge Elliott, Cyril Ritchard, Billy Cunningham and Harry Wootton —all of them Australians —are in the cast. Reita Nugent, who played in London for 14 months in ‘Mr. Cinders,’ opens this week in the Berlin production in her original part. She will play it in German, having learned the language in six months. “Vera Pearce has had a big success in New York, and is destined for talkie work shortly, I believe. “Dorothy Seacombe and Eve Grey are both doing very well in British talkies.” Some In Hollywood Frank Harvey, who through his long association with the stage in Australia, is almost regarded as an Australian, is achieving fame as a playwright. He has sold the talkie rights for his two plays—“ The Last Enemy.” and “Cape Forlorn” —and although these productions were not successful financially when put on as plays, he is regarded as a writer of no mean ability. George Gee had a triumphal run in London last year, but at the time Mr. Holt left London, was not working. Marie Burke and Maurice Moscovitch are both in Hollywood, booked for talkie contracts —and Marie Tempest, another favourite of Australian audiences, is starring in “The First Mrs. Fraser,” the which has had more than a year’s run at the Haymarket Theatre already. Although during the summer London experienced the greatest theatrical slump it has had for many years. Mr. Holt considers it has had one good effect. Theatre Rents Down “During the war,” he said, “there was a phenomenal demand for theatres, and leases for even small houses were signed for at as high a figure as £SOO a week—increasing vastly the cost of production for plays. Now that the demand for theatres has lessened, these rent profiteers find themselves seriously embarrassed, and the result is that houses are now available for £2OO where previously £SOO was demanded. “Even so, new theatres are constantly being built, the latest being the Ziegfeld Theatre, which is to open shortly with a new revue. There is also the new Jack Buchanan Theatre, in Leicester Square—but this, I underj stand, is to be a f talkie bouse eventually. British Talkies Good “British talkies are forging ahead wonderfully. The latest release, ‘Symphony in Two Flats,’ with Ivor Novello and Cyril Ritchard in the cast, is receiving particularly good press notices.” Mr. Holt said British authors and composers were displacing many of the imported American musical comedies which had flooded London for so many years. Before the end of the year, three new musical shows were to be produced in the West End. and all of them by young British authors. Although vaudeville, temporarily, was waning, he predicted a strong revival before long—perhaps through the medium of the talkie houses, which . showed a tendency to interpolate one i or two vaudeville acts in their picture programme.