AMUSEMENTS.

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXV, Issue 18627, 24 July 1930, Page 3

AMUSEMENTS.

ATTRACTIVE DOUBLE PROGRAMME. AT THE ROYAL. “The Lone Wolf’s Daughter” heads a good double programme at the Royal Theatre at present. It is supplemented by “The Bachelor’s Girl.” and the two pictures combine to make a most attractive screen entertainment. “The Lone Wolf’s Daughter,” featuring Bert Lytell, is perhaps the best of the Louis Joseph Vance novels so far picturised. It relates the adventures and love affair of the “Lone Wolf” after he has adopted a daughter. He is anxious to see her married to a wealthy youth and this endeavour makes him the prey of a pair of international crooks. He is constantly playing strategy against cunning and thwarting them at every turn in the game. The suspense and mystery are well sustained. Thrills are plentiful and on nearly every occasion they end with a surprise entirely unexpected by the audience. The direction is clever. Each scene blends into the succeeding sequence in a most natural manner and in several places human interest touches have been introduced in masterly manner. Albert S. Rogell is responsible for the direction and James Van Trees for the camera work. A number of novel photographic effects and a television in operation have been included in the action. The second offering, “The Bachelor Girl,” stars William Collier junior, and Jacqueline Logan in a natural story of everyday life. A beautiful and successful business girl falls in love with a shiftless but handsome young man and eventually runs his job for him. How she -extricates him from scrape after scrape, only to lose him in the end, is the skeleton on which the story is hung; but it is, of course, superfluous to add that after their long estrangement the two lovers are happily reunited, for that is an essential of a good picture, and “The Bachelor Girl” must be classed as such.

“JAZZ HEAVEN.” AT THE MAJESTIC. Yet another of Radio Pictures' successful productions opened at the Majectic Theatre last night, in “Jazz Heaven,” starring John Mack Brown and Sally O’Neill. “Jazz Heaven,” taken from an original story by Pauline Forney and Dudley Murphy, casts John Mack Brown as a young song writer, who is having a hard time to gain the attention of a publisher. Moreover, he isn’t satisfied with the closing bars of the score, and he keeps other roomers in his boardinghouse in a bad frame of mind while he tries to get just the right effect. A girl living in the next room helps him with the finishing lines and goes out of her way to introduce him to the bosses of the music publishing house where she works. In her effort to serve, motivated mostly by love for the songwriter, she nearly loses him. The picture contains a charming theme song “Someone,” which tends to become one of the most popular song hits of the year. The supporting cast includes notable stars of stage and screen, including Joseph Cawthorn, one of the oldest stars of the musical comedy stage, is seen in another delightful comedy role similar to his part in “Street Girl,” the picture which brought Cawthorn to the fore as an outstanding film comedian. Melville Brown directed “Jazz Heaven.” Good supports include “Old Bill’s Christmas,” a clever storyette from the pen of Bruce Bairnsfather, a Paramount Sound News, and a laughable comedy “Old Vamps for New.” There will be a matinee at 2.15 this afternoon.

“ATLANTIC,” BRITAIN'S MIGHTY TALKING PICTURE. “Atlantic,” from the play “The Berg,” by Ernest Raymond, and which commences at the Majestic Theatre tomorrow, has a sound beginning, and is acted by a company of splendid Home artists, including Miss Ellaline Terris (Mrs Seymour Hicks), Franklyn Dyall, John Longden, Donald Calthorp, Monty Banks, John Stuart, Madeline Carroll and Joan Barry, to name but a few. “Atlantic” is based on the wreck of the Titanic, and there is made no effort on the part of the film’s producers to shroud the origin of the play in mystery; only the name of the vessel is different. It is a matter for selfcongratulation that it has been an English company which has turned out this sterling production. The tragedy is treated with extreme delicacy and there is only a moderate speed of action throughout, that is in perfect keeping with the theme. The story opens with a group of passengers introduced to the audience in a novel manner; we have a glimpse into their private lives, their own little hopes and fears, hates and loves, that seem so very important to them. When the great ship crashes into an iceberg, her plates ripped, with water pouring in, and the knowledge bursts upon the people that they have one or two hours to live, the atmosphere undergoes a complete change. There is a lot of humour in the sight of a pair of English gentlemen solemnly waiting at the ship’s bar for service that they eventually have to render themselves; there is tragedy and terror afoot, but there is a very near approach to lion-hearted courage. These scenes, when everyone is just waiting for the Titanic to roll into the depths of the Atlantic, are sufficiently moving to bring a lump to the throat of the most hardened picturegoer or reviewer. Families are parted for ever, husbands send their wives away, some wives refuse to leave their men, children run madly about screaming for their parents—it is not theatrical, it must be remembered that in essentials this picture is a page from real life. Box plans will open at the Bristol this morning.