ENTERTAINMENTS

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 56, Issue 4064, 24 June 1938, Page 8

ENTERTAINMENTS

AT THE REGENT. FINAL SCREENING TO-NIGHT. “OUTCASTS OF POKER FLAT.” Bret Harte’s famous story of romance and sacrifice in the early Californian gold diggings, “ The Outcasts of Poker Flat,” becomes a thrilling -ver - sion with Preston Foster and Jean Muir heading a notable cast. The drama and suspense of the original story, perhaps the best known of all Harte’s tales, arises out of the romance of the principal character, Oakhurst the gambler, with a pretty school teacher who is also loved by a young minister, and the mutual interest of all three in a waif of the frontier mining camp. The supporting cast includes Van Heflin, Virginia Weidler, Margaret Irving, Frank M. Thomas, Billy Gilbert, Si Jenks, and Dick Elliott. SATURDAY AND MONDAY. “CAFE METROPOLE.” The complaints of telephone operators, who in the past have objected to the way telephonic conversations were staged in motion pictures, at last have been answered in “ Cafe Metropole,” the Twentieth Century-Fox romantic comedy starring Loretta Young, Tyrone Power, and Adolphe Menjou. It will open at Regent Theatre to-morrow. On the “ Cafe Metropole ” set the director, Edward H. Griffith, ordered a regular telephone connection to be made between the telephone on the set where Loretta was to appear before the camera and another in Tyrone Power’s dressingroom, where he was to speak lines that are not heard on the screen but which would be the natural response to hers. AT THE EMPIRE. COMMENCING TO-MORROW. “ SMARTEST GIRL IN TOWN.” Revolving about the romance of a beautiful photographic model and a masquerading wealthy playboy, “ The Smartest Girl in Town ” brings Ann Sothern and Gene Raymond together again this week-end at the Empire TheaUe. The two favourites who scored so notably in their recent picture, “ Walking on Air,” are endowed with an even faster and funnier story in “ The Smartest Girl in Town.” They share the stellar niche, supported by a brilliant cast, including Helen Broderick, Eric Blore, Erik Rhodes, Harry Jans, and Frank Jenks. The delightful story has Miss Sothern spending her days posing before the camera for advertisements of everything from tooth paste to lingerie, and spending her evenings planning to marry a millionaire. Her only marital prospect is an excitable foreigner, more interested in birds’ eggs than in romance; so she is somewhat sharp with a good-looking young stranger who poses with her in some yacht photographs. FINAL SCREENING TO-NIGHT. “MIDNIGHT MENACE.” How a fit of sneezing at the wrong moment put a young unknown girl on the road to film success was recently disclosed at the Pinewood studios. The girl is Margaret Vyner, a tall, slim, beautiful blonde from Australia who has just completed “ Midnight Menace,” also starring Charles Farrell, the Hollywood actor, and Fritz Kortnev, in the new A.T.P. film. Sinclair Hill, who directed the picture, regards Margaret as the British film “ discovery ” of the year.