AMUSEMENTS

Timaru Herald, Volume CXLIII, Issue 20768, 1 July 1937, Page 5

AMUSEMENTS

MARITAL MIX-UP CHARGES RUGGLES AT STATE The mess that can be stirred up in the lives of a happily wedded pair by a self-appointed love expert who has some original If not startling theories on the anatomy of happiness, is delightfully portrayed in a new comedy starring Carlie Ruggles, Mary Boland and featuring Adolphe Menjou which is at the State Theatre. The couple, the inimitable Charlie Ruggles and Mary Boland, the screen’s favourite husband-and-wife, thought they were Ideally wedded until suave Adolphe Menjou, author of "Marriage —The Living Death," arrives upon the scene. The complications which ensue form one of the most hilarious and delightful domestic comedies of the current season. Jessie Matthews To-morrow. To-morrow the State will screen ■Head Over Heels,” starring Jessie Matthews. It is a typical Jessie Matthews film, with plenty of singing, dancing, laughter and pleasant people. The star herself, back on the screen again after a break caused by severe illness, is the same popular personality, who does deftly through her work welding together the good cast about her. "Head Over Heels” is essentially a dght production, and its story is correspondingly so. It relies almost entirely on the performance of Je: !e Matthews, who carries practically the whole of the burden and does it well. It is certainly a heavier task than she has had in earlier pictures, as the absence of the clever humour of Sonnie Hale leaves a gap which even fine directing on his part cannot fill. “BORN TO DANCE” GOOD DANCING AT MAJESTIC “Born to Dance,” which has proved very popular at the Majestic, will have its final screenings to-day. It Is a spectacular musical comedy and is notable for the clever tap-dancing of ■the star Eleanor Powell. The seven principal songs of "Bom to Dance” are the work of Cole Porter, who was the chief composer for the film “Anything Goes," and was the composer cf the popular tunes “Night and Day" and “You're the Top.”

“The Charge of the Light Brigade.” “The Charge of the Light Brigade,’’ Warner Bros.' stupendous production suggested by the immortal poem of Alfred, Lord Tennyson, comes to the Majestic Theatre on Saturday with an all-star cas’ headed by Errol Flynn and Olivia de Havilland. The absorbing story of which the charge of the Light Brigade makes the sensational climax begins in India, where two brothers, both army officers, are rivals for the hand of a beautiful Scottish girl. The girl is betrothed to the elder, but during his absence, fighting on the frontier, she falls in love with the younger. She struggles against this love, believing herself obliged to her fiance, but when she finds that both of her lovers have been ordered to the front against the Russians in the Crimea, she confesses er love for his brother to her betrothed, at the same time expressing her fear that the man she loves will be killed In battle. The elder brother and superior officer promises he will keep the younger from danger, and carries out this pledge when he sends his brother back to headquarters with a note to the commandant telling him that he has deliberately changed an order for retreat into an attack, he himself riding to his death on the battlefield.

TWO GOOD FILMS REGENT’S DOUBLE BILL In “Arizona Mahoney” an hilarious travesty of the wild and woolly West, which is now at the Regent, Zane Grey has mingled the bark of guns with the honks of a trained goose, the clatter of galloping hoofs with the trumpetIngs of a circus elephant, and bandit chieftains vie with carnival operators. Joe Cook, “the one-man circus” has the title role. Edward Everett Horton, wry-faced comedian, has the aid of a cast of some of the screen’s leading character actors in the Paramount comedy, “Let’s Make a Million.” As villain, Horton plays opposite Porter Hall and Purnell Pratt. Aids in comedy action include the famous “pixilated sisters,” Margaret Seddon and Margaret McWade. J. M. Kerrigan, Irving Bacon and a score of others back them up. New Mae West. A new and different Mae West parades her way through Paramount’s “Go West Young Man,” hey latest comedy which begins on Saturday at the Regent Theatre. Instead of the ovar-drewed beauty of th* “nifty n nchee, 1 * the rtle which made her the world s' most celebrated movie actress, the new Mae Is now A modern young lady, a movie actress this time, wearing Gorgeous gowns which are the last word from the modiste shops of Paris. Even the setting for her latest story is different. Where she previously disported herself against the “gingerbread" grandeur of the nineties, she now does her stuff on a typical American farm, right down among the cows and chickens. It is on this farm that

she finds love, in the person of Randolph Scott, a backwoods inventor. THE MARCUS SHOW TIMARU SEASON Introducing super-vaudeville entertainment from all over the world—from Broadway, London. Paris, Mexico, the East, In fact, everywhere where there are new, striking and entertaining acts to be found—the celebrated Marcus Show will open its Tlmaru season at the Theatre Royal on Monday. A strange and colourful new world Is presented when the curtain rises on each revue, and until It falls on the final number, the audience revels in a riot of colourful beauty, spectacle and glamour. As each presentation is unfolded it seems to open new gateways to Hollywood. It is the atmosphere of the musical extravaganzas grown familiar to fllmgoers in recent years. There is the same spon-

taneous gaiety, the beautiful precision of chorus and ballet, and the artistry of the principals. For stage spectacles the Marcus Show sets a high and expensive standard for entertainment of its kind. One episode succeeds another with astounding rapidity. The full resources of the theatre are used, and every form of art, dressing, painting and music, is employed to the full. Although the first spectacle in “La Vie Paree”—“Black and White”— is really beautiful, it is surpassed by “Fantasle Parisienne,” a gorgeous spectacle full of surprises and bewildering in its beauty of gold and silver, colour and glitter—and girls, some wearing enormous headdresses In feathers and filagree. Rough-house In a low-down cabaret gives scope for clever and lively movement with a tragic sequel, and a Mexican festive scene affords opportunity for some clever dancing, including the national dance on the broad brim of a sombrero. In this scene Sofia Alvarez plays a distinguished part. The opinion of a northern critic that “there are no individual artists in the Marcus Show—it is one composite whole, every member of the cast doing his or her best to make the performance the great success it is,” will, it is claimed, be borne out by all who see the show. The tour is under the auspices of Sir Benjamin Fuller, In association with Messrs L. S. Snider and G. B. Dean.