PICTURES, PLAYS AND PLAYERS.

Waipawa Mail, Volume LI, Issue 38, 13 December 1929, Page 4

PICTURES, PLAYS AND PLAYERS.

♦ # ♦ QOMING ATTRACTIONS. ♦

THE STAGE Mary Maegregor (playing: in Melbourne) is a Queensland girl, but made her first appearance on the stage in New Zealand. Oscar Asehe declared that she was the best exponent of the role ot Jill in ‘ lhe Skin Game” he had ever seen.

Mr George Highland (who came to New Zealand to rehearse the “Desert Song” company in “New Moon, the romantic musical comedy which achieved a big success in London and New York), returns with the company to Sydney.

Daphne Pollard, who was born in Melbourne, was one ol* the original Lilliputians. After touring through Australia she went to France and became a star comedienne with the Folies Bergere, Paris. Going to the United States, she made a name on the vaudeville stage, then appeared in silent pictures and is now playingin talkies.

The captain of an Orient liner was present, at a performance of “Brewster’s Millions” at the Comedy Theatre, Melbourne, and after the ship scene and the realistic storm, called around to see the manager. “It was the most amazing bit of realism I have ever seen on the stage,” he said. “As 1 watched the scene I felt that T was on deck, and I wanted to cheer when the signal lamps were hauled to the masthead.” “Whoopee,” tin* remarkably bright musical comedy, is both picturesque and animated. There are 15 important characters in this lively musical and dancing comedy, and the cast will be one of the strongest ever sent

to New Zealand. “Whoopee” will commence its New Zealand tour at Auckland on Boxing night. There are attractive scenes and dancing interludes, and the ballet is said to be an outstanding feature of the production. Excellent comedy is distributed throughout the play, and the performance causes hearty laughter, while the specialty and concerted dancing is described as excellent. A book of plays just published is “Banned by the Censor,” by Edgar Middleton, whose play, “Potiphar’s Wife,” was prohibited. The Lord Chamberlain also rejected three sketches by the author in a revue, “Morning, Noon and Night,” which was produced at the Everyman Theatre, llampsted, in May of this year. Because one of these, an amusing skit, entitled “Mussolini’s Lunch,” was regarded as “insulting to a leading statesman of a foreign country,” Mr Middleton used this advertising opportunity to publish with it one or two risque sketches of little worth. The volume contains, however, a short sketch, “Habit,” that was played in George Robey’s Revue, “Bits and Bits.” “Habit” is excellent, and is <o slight that it would make a very good radio item.

“Buy a Broom,” a play in three acts, by Eden Phillpotts, which has been received from London, is an interesting attempt to dramatise life in a gipsies’ camp. For a plot the author has precipitated the foster child of a farmer, who has a deepseated hatred of Romany customs and those living them, into a colony of gipsies bound fur Maybridge Fair. Gilvan Forrester had fallen down a gravel pit, and Saul Beale went to her rescue, and brought her to the gipsy caravan, where she is compelled to remain until her injuries are healed. Gilvan and Saul fall in love, and it is not until Saul’s mother, Rhoda, and Farmer Forrester come together that the plot of the play is apparent. For Saul is actually Forrester’s son, and a reconciliation between the father and mother removes that mutual antagonism to the youngpeople’s marriage, which those characters had bitterly expressed. If the by-play in the gipsy camp were more convincing, “Buy a Broom” might be considered attractive enough for stage production.

Athletics and acting do not mix to any great extent, except in the publicity provided by imaginative writers concerning wonderful achievements in some remote country by a matinee idol or a screen star. Still, there are exceptions., One was Norman Trevor, who died in California on October 31st. Trevor was born in India in 1877, and in youth he was an allround champion athlete there. He was a member of the English Olympic team in Paris in 1900, and in his time he won more than 120 prizes for athletics. In Paris he was awarded a medal and a bronze statue for having the best physique of athletes of all nations. From this it might be thought that Trevor, as an actor, depended mainly on his appearance, hut that was not the case. He was allotted nmtiy good parts in London and New York, and he acted them ably. O «-ar Asclie, in a recently published autobiography, brings into contrast

his early days in England, when he was so poor that he had to sleep on the Thames Embankment, and his success a good many years later with “Chu Chin Chow.” He tells that he began to write the play in a wet week in Manchester, when it was impossible to play golf. Mrs Asehe (Lily Brayton) said, “Why not write that pantomime you are always talking about?” and, accordingly, he dictated day by day to a. stenographer. It was continued and completed in London, taking altogether only a fortnight. Its brilliance of spectacular production, in which Mr Asclie is an expert, probably had more to do with its success than the writing. Mr Asclie tolls that the play was shown to several producers, who said that it was no good} but he made considerably more than £200,000 net in royal - ties from it. There would be in addition his rich reward as manager and as actor. “Everybody associated with it made a fortune,” writes Mr Asclie. I lost a lot of money in greyhound racing; then came the moneylenders, and finally the farm in Gloucestershire, which from first to last cost me £100,000.” No* wonder he adds that “my fault is that I cannot save.” Oscar Asclie says that at the age of 58 years he is setting out to redeem his fortunes. o o o THE PICTURES. John Gilbert wore tights as “Romeo” to play a scene from Shakespeare in “Hollywood Revue of 1920,” with Lionel Barrymore directing. He looked fine, Barrymore declared. “Most men don’t nowadays,” he added. “Til modern drama, wearing pants has let down the bars to manv bow-legged heroes—in the days when T started acting we all wore tights in most plays—so we had to keep in shape. Acting is a snap now, so far as one’s ‘daily dozen’ is concerned.”

Training 72 boys and girls to perform intricate feats of dancing and military formation on a stage of steps, all within the range of the camera’s eye, was one of the many tasks of Sammy Lee, dance director, who staged the ensemble numbers for “The I 101 l v wood Revue of 1929.”

Adolph Tandler, musical directoi discovered a treasure house of mush when a friend permitted him to delvi into a private library of African ab original music, the only collection o its kind in the world. Native song! and chants of the jungle folks neve before heard have been selected fron the collection to fit the Kaffir se quences of “Mamba,” in which Jeai Horsholt, Eleanor Boardman am Ralph Forbes are being starred. AI of the music for this all-color, all sound and dialogue pieture has heci arranged by Tandler, who has jus completed teaching the melodies !< tin l colored chorus as well as tin English and German martial mush to the colored military hands used ii the picture.

The land ,of Kudyard Kipling’s im mortal Fuzzy-Wuzzys, which is situated in the Red Sea Hills, a few hundred miles north of Portuguese Easl Africa, is one of the most diflicull 'ibices of access in lhe whole of Africa The ndvenhirers, Ernest Sclioedsack and Marian Cooper, who filmed lhe outdoor scenes for tin* silent epic “The Four Feathers,” made tin* arduous trip to obtain genuine pictures of these famous desert fighters. Sail ing from Mikidani, in Portuguese Easl Africa, they travelled up llm African

coast, through flu* Gulf of Aden, through the Straits of Bah el Mandeh, and up the Red Sea to Port Sudan. From thence th,ey travelled by.caravan 700 miles south-west lo the Nuba Mountains of the Sudan, moved several hundred miles noith and east to the Athara river, then down the river into the Red Sea Hills. MMiousamb of the Fuzzy-Wuzzy warriors are seen racing across the desert on their speedy camels, to give battle to the British forces in one of the big scenes.

Weddings—how they go on. Carol Dempster, Griffith’s slim mystery girl, to Edwin S. Larsen, investment hanker, in New York. The couple immediately sailed away on the Leviathan for a European honeymoon. Marion Nixon, long a popular leading woman, to Edward Hillman, junr., of Chicago. Marion’s first husband was Joe Benjamin, the boxer. This happy couple went abroad on the Tie de France. Alma Bennett, the dark menace of many a picture, to Harry Spingler, her manager. Tf was the second matrimonial try for both. Last hut not least, Ruth Elder, lhe Hying actress or acting flyer, to Walter Camp, son of the late king of foot hall. Ruth gave her age as 25, Camp his as 38. It is Ruth’s third try.