ENTERTAINMENTS

Taranaki Daily News, 13 November 1929, Page 3

ENTERTAINMENTS

EVERYBODY’S THEATRE. NEW PROGRAMME. ■ “The Greene Murder Case,” which heads the new programme, is a. 100 per cent, all-talking thriller. The plot has to io with the strange killings, which occur in the Greene family’s household. An elder sbn, his younger brother and then their mother succumb to the fiendish hand of an Unknown murderer. William Powell, as Philo Vance, is called in on the case by.his friend of a former murder mystery film (“The Canary Murder. Case”)> E. H. Calver, . the district; attorney. Working on the case with Powell is Eugene Pallette, . the. practical-minded, and blundering comedy detective, who was also one of the. figures in “The Canary Murder Case.” After a series of uncanny and thrilling events, Powell solves, the deep mystery with the suavity and super-intelligence that S. S. Vaii Dine wrote into this character in his novels. Powell’s performance is flawless. If you like your thrills dished up with machinegun rapidity, if you like entertainment that keeps your pulses tingling, don’t pass up ‘The Greene Murder Case.” It is one of the season’s best bets. The supporting programme includes Jed’s Vacation (all-talking comedy), Crooning Melodies (musical number),’ and The flaw Recruit (an all-talking British De Forest comedy starring Earnie Lotinga).

PEOPLES TALIKES. “THE BROADWAY MELODY.” Musical corned, and vaudeville dancers, recruited from stage shows in New York and the Pacific Coast, have their innings in the first all-talking, allsinging, all-dancing musical comedy of the screen, “The Broadway Melody,” Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer’s monster attraction commencing at The People’s Talkies, New Plymouth, to-night. Ballets, song ensembles and other brilliant acts figure in the . theatre scenes in this vivid drama of back-stage life. Among the dancing stars are Alice Weaver, New York danseuse, Fletcher Norton, known on the stage as the world’s greatest soft shoe danegr, and many others. .Anita Page, Besgie Love and Charles King, former New York musical comedy star, head the cast in the new, production, the first picture for which special music and iyrics were produced. Arthur Freed and. Naeio Herb Brown, famous composers of “The Doll Dance,” worked with scenarists and dialogue writers to compose its brilliant “Broadway Melody,” “You Were Made For Me,” “Wedding of the Painted. Doll,” and the rest of the scintillating numbers. The latter was produced as a brilliant stage spectacle filmed in natural colours. The new picture is a vivid romance with Miss Page and Miss Love playing a “sister act” of the stage. They bring their act to Broadway and there it fails. One finds happiness and love, winning the man of her heart. The other, though she loses her fiance, philosophically shrugs her shoulders and goes on with her act somewhere out in the “sticks.” The supports include Metro Movietone revue, (song and dance number), The Capitolians (musical) and “Unaccustomed. As We Are”. (Laurel Hardy all-talking comedy).

“THE DESERT SONG." SPECTACULAR MUSICAL COMEDY. In going to see “The Desert Song," which will be played for two performances only to-morrow at the New Plymouth Opera House (in the afternoon and again at night) under the J. C. Williamson management, the public will be honouring an actor who is also a New Zealander, and by his world-wide success has to some extent brought lustre to the Dominion. Lance Fairfax, who acts the part of Red Shadow, chief of the Riffs of Moroeco, is a native of Wellington. A baritone voice of remarkable quality and a fine sense of the actor’s art have lifted him to the ranks, of the world’s best wherever singing and acting go together. , Considered as a successor to the beautifully spectacular “Rose Marie, . lhe Desert Song” is generally considered superior even to that and to ‘ The Vagabond King” and “The Student Prince. Lance Fairfax 1 is assisted by a cast that is one of the finest ever assembled by J. C. Williamson for a production of a like nature. Lance Fairfax will play a dual part, a half-wit, the result of being struck on the head by his superior officer in the battalion of which he was a member, and head of the Riffs,; to whom he goes for the purpose of working out liia revenge. It is in this letter clmrnc ter that "he is the real hero- as he appears on the stage on his white charger, or sings the numerous songs of. love or incitement to daring action. Opposite to him is Romalla Hansen, who, as Margot, falls passionately in love with the Red Shadow. The box plans are rapidly filling at Collier’s. :