AMUSEMENTS

Timaru Herald, Volume CXLIII, Issue 20672, 10 March 1937, Page 11

AMUSEMENTS

REGENT THEATRE “THE GAY DESPERADO” A rare treat is in store for musiclovers when Pickford-Lasky’s “The Gfey Desperado” brings Nino Martini, famous singing star of opera, radio and films, to the Regent Theatre. In addition to the original songs written for Martini, there will be several operatic solos and a number of Mexican folk songs. “The World Is Mine To-night,” written for the picture by the British composers, Holt Marvell and George Posford, is already popular on the air. Another original number, “Adios Mi Tierra,” was composed by the singer’s own accompanist, Miguel Sandoval. The Verdi Aria, “Celeste Aida,” will be the highlight of the operatic music and three famous Mexican songs, “Cielita Lindo,” “Lamento Gitano” and “Estrellita,” will complete the star’s diversified repertory in the picture. “Garden of Allah” Tilly * Losch, the world-famous dancer, does an authentic Ouled Nail dance in “The Garden of Allah,” David O. Selznick’s technicoloUr production which brings Marlene Dietrich and Charles Boyer to the Regent Theatre on Friday. Miss Losch, who makes her film bow in the famous Robert Hitchens love story, perfected the number under the tutelage of an Arabian dancer. “The Garden of Allah” offers Marlene Dietrich and Charles Boyer their greatest roles as Domini and Boris, a woman and man from widely different worlds who fled to the Algerian desert to start life anew, and under the mystic spell of the desert, were swept into one of the strangest and most beautiful romances the screen has ever shown. STATE THEATRE DOUBLE PROGRAMME Postal Inspector” and “Crash Donovan” will open at the State Theatre to-day. Swirling flood waters rusn through streets seething with turmoil in “Postal Inspector,” the thrilling Universal drama. The picture presents an exciting story about a 3,000,000 dollar mail robbery carried out during a torrential flood. The gang hopes to get away in the confusion of the downrushing waters that threaten an entire city. Ricardo Cortez Is featured as the postal inspector who hunts the thieves in spite of hail, high water and personal dangers. Bela Lugosi portrays a night club owner who plans the robbery. Patricia Ellis is a singer in his club, in love with a bank clerk, enacted by Michael Loring. “Crash Donovan” is a fast moving drama filled with intense excitement. This Universal screen offering reveals thrilling incidents in the lives of state highway police and builds up to a climax that makes the blood race. Jack Holt portrays a motor-cycle officer who has to face unusual dangers in performing his task. The part of the liardboiled “cop” fits him splendidly. Nan Gray, winsome in the leading feminine role, is delightfully provocative as the girl who is loved by two different cycle patrolmen.

MAJESTIC THEATRE “PALM SPRINGS” Frances Langford, Sir Guy Standing, and Smith Ballew, head the cast of Walter Wanger’s production for Paramount, “Palm Springs,” which opens to-day at matinee. This is the first time the resort near Hollywood, where cinema stars rest and play between pictures, has been filmed. Because of its interesting atmosphere, it is used as the setting for the story which offers Frances Langford as a young society deb who is suddenly thrown into the gay maze of a Palm Springs vacation. She is forced into seeking marriage with a playboy millionaire to save her family from poverty, in spite of the great love she already bears for a handsome cowboy. To win the young scion, she masquerades as an English noblewoman. Frances almost succeeds in

completing the alliance when her father, realising that she is sacrificing herself for him, exposes her. How he frustrates the marriage, and aids Ballew, enacting the cowboy she loves, to get her, supply a Utting climax to the story. Five songs especially written for the picture are sung by Miss Langford and Mr Ballew during the course of story unfoldment. A feature, ‘‘Toll of the Road,” with Randolph Scott and Frances Drake also goes with this programme. THEATRE ROYAL CONCESSION NIGHT The concession night programme at the Theatre Royal is up to standard. In ‘‘The Daring Young Man” James Dunn goes to gaol, but the Fox Film actor will not be alone in his incarceration, however, as Mae Clarke, Warren Hymer, Sidney Toler, Jack Le Rue, Raymond Hatton, and other well-known screen players will accompany him; at least for part of his sentence. Since Dunn and the other prisoners feel Only for the sake of art, their fanciers need not worry over their imprisonment. It is all for a hilarious sequence in this feature, a romantic comedy of newspaper life. Dunn’s gaol-going is done on the order of his editor, who wants to get an ‘‘inside story’’ on what is really going on within the prison walls. The new Gaumont-British film, “The Clairvoyant,” is the associate attraction and one of the most unusual films of its kind yet released. Brimful of dramatic situations, the film deals with a fake clairvoyant, who, while presenting a music-hall act actually becomes clairvoyant. The cast is headed by Claude Rains, Fay Wray and Jane Baxter. The programme commences at 7.45.