ENTERTAINMENTS

Taranaki Daily News, 12 September 1934, Page 3

ENTERTAINMENTS

NEW PLYMOUTH OPERA HOUSE. “SING AND LIKE IT.” To act or not to act? That's the question over which countless hearts have been broken and homes have been wrecked. It also has its lighter side, as is demonstrated in the R.K.0.-Radio comedy, “Sing and Like It,” which screens at the New Plymouth Opera House to-morrow and Friday at 2 and 8 p.m. Zasu Pitts and Pert Kelton are co-featured in this rollicking satire, and both the characters they portray have ambitions for an acting career. As Annie Snodgrass, Zasu is quite sure the world would never be quite the same without the ennobling influence of her singing voice; and as Ruby, a gangster’s girl friend, Pert Kelton is sure it would not be right to keep such shapely legs as hers away from the glare of the footlights and the gaze of an admiring public. In this instance, the voice proves mightier than the legs, and so Zasu has her big moment of fame, while Pert has to drown her sorrow over blighted ambition with chewing gum. A slightly balmy theatrical producer and a racketeer king who goes goofy over a sentimental concoction of fun and nonsense figure prominently in this film. Edward Everett Horton has a laugh-rich role as a temperamental theatrical producer, and other comedians in the cast are Ned Sparks, Stanley. Fields, Matt McHugh and Richard Carle. EVERYBODY’S THEATRE, SPECTACULAR MUSICAL PLAY. “Footlight Parade,” one of the most spectacular musical comedies yet made, commences its local season at Everybody’s Theatre to-day at 2 and 8 p.m. Ruby Keeler (Mrs. Al. Jolson), Dick Powell, Guy Kibbee, Joan Blondell, James Cagney and other old favourites appear in the big cast. In most musical films the music is paramount, even though it is not always very good; but in “Footlight Parade” there is a definite story—drama, humour and good acting, and the musical numbers, elaborate as they are, are incidental to the plot. Three of the numbers are perhaps the best batch ever put on the screen, each different, each with catchy music, and each superlatively done. “Honeymoon Hotel,” “By at Waterfall,” and “Shanghai Lil,” are. numbers which will not readily be forgotten. The cast, is enormous. The film deals with the work of a great firm making prologues for cinema theatres and hundreds of people are seen in action during the unwinding of the plot, reaching its climax in the beautiful and novel “By a Waterfall” number, which is probably the most unusual spectacle ever put on the' film. It features scores of beautiful girls in a giant marble tank, and is set to very attractive music. Entertaining shorter films include Cinesound Review, “Movie Memories” (novelty) and Sigmund Spaeth (musical featurette). The box plans are at Collier’s or phone reservations can be secured by ringing 365 to-night. REGENT THEATRE. ADVENTURE AND COMEDY. Edmund Lowe and Victor McLaglen, those two boisterous, fighting, clowning pals, who have fought their way around the world, are at it again, forty fathoms under the sea, in the Paramount picture, “No More Women,” which begins at The Regent to-night. Real enemies when their fight is private, they are pals to the death against outsiders. This time they are cast as two deep-sea divers; ace-men on rival tugs, they fight together on the bottom, of the ocean for sunken gold. Just when they think their jobs are lost due to a mortgage on the tug, their hopes are revived. Sally Blane appears as the owner of the boat. After a hectic battle in which McLaglen is almost murdered they throw down the hatchet momentarily and go with Sally on the search of a two million dollar sunken treasure. Forty fathoms underneath the surface of the water, a diver from an opposing tug tries to kill McLaglen. Lowe starts to the rescue and then follows a most exciting climax, which brings the boys back safe and sound, ready to resume their private scrap for their best girl’s heart. The shorts include Australian Fox News, featuring the fourth Cricket Test, Screen Song, Paramount Pictorial Varieties, “Broadway Knights” (novelty) and British Sound News. WILLIAMSON OPERA COMPANY. “WALTZES FROM VIENNA.” To-night Miss Sylvia Welling and the J. C. Williamson, Ltd., Company, which last night achieved an outstanding triumph in “The Dubarry,” will make their final appearance at New Plymouth in a brilliant representation of the stupendous comic opera “Waltzes from Vienna,” which proved even more popular in Auckland than “The Dubarry.” The spectacular nature of the production of “Waltzes from Vienna” concerns the two Johann Strausses, father and son. It tells of the father’s indifference to his son's gifts, and a fine climax is reached when the elder man recognises in the younger’s “Blue Danube” a work of genius. There is a delightful love story running through the opera and it provides the composers with an opportunity of interpolating a number of songs set to the music of one Strauss or the other, and all of them crammed full of melody. “At times,” wrote a London critic, “enjoying ‘Waltzes from Vienna’ is just like a dream of delight which makes one forget one is in a theatre at all, a dream of moving colours and lights, of rich and lovely costumes of the old Vienna of the “Forties.” And over all is the spell of the Strauss melodies, or swaying and streaming rhythms that bring the witchery of the Danube into the theatre.” Miss Sylvia Welling created a sensation at Auckland in the role of Countess Olga Barankaja, and critics there went so far as to state that she is even greater as a singer and an actress in “Waltzes from Vienna” than she is in "The Dubarry.” Mr. John Dudley’s magnificent tenor voice is heard at its very best in the

Strauss music. Mr. Cecil Kellaway has achieved one of his best triumphs in the comedy character of Hieronymus Ebeseder, and Mr. Leslie Holland is congeniality cast as Karl Hirsch. Others who have assisted to make a brilliant success of “Waltzes from Vienna” are Richard Parry, Jean Duncan, Lorna Forbes, Lou Vernon, Hilton Porter, Clifford Cowley, Cecil Pawley, Douglas Herald and Ivy Kirby, whose beautiful dancing is a feature of the production.