FROM UNITED ARTISTS

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 73, Issue 115, 17 May 1930, Page 3 (Supplement)

FROM UNITED ARTISTS

INTERESTING SIDELIGHTS. “Curioscr and Curioscr!” cried Alice (she was so much surprised, tha.-. « ioi the moment she'quite forgot, how to I speak good Eng Isb). Mr Lewis Carroll’s little girl, interviewed upon her | advent to the audible «c.eei. theq screen of Mr Fan Carroll's L’l; at re in ! | New York, exclaimed, further “Dear, i; dear! How queer everything is to-day! l ( And yesterday things went on just as ] usual.” f Mother Goose helped out by contri- • buting Humpty Dumpty, who docs his ; death-defying leap, and Tweedie Dee and Tweedie Dum, who look as much ] alike as the McCarthy Sisters and who [ | dance not quite so well as they. Also j < present on the screen of the theatre L that offers the new Irving Berlin-Harry ■ Richman film are the White Rabbit, The ‘ Duchess, The March Hare, The Walrus, .t The Carpenter, tho Mad Hatter (look- I < ing not unlike Schnnzzle (Devil-May-j t Caro) Durante and dancing about as j t vigorously), The Queen of Hearts and t her fifty-one intimates, The Mock | t Turtle, and the rest of those who poj >- • s

lated Wonderland when Alice looked in the mirror. Alice is Joan Bennett, blonde, beautiful, glamorous. It is thought that Tweedie Dee is really Ambrose Bierce and that Tweedie Dum is the missing Charlie Ross, operating under an alias that was used by Jesse James during his days as a life-saver. Irving Berlin wrote the music, William Cameron Menzies designed tho sets Alice O’Neill contributed tho costumes, and Edward Slonian directed. The Alice in Wonderland number of “Putttin’ on the Ritz” is done in technicolor, with overtone singing. The piece 4 nds itself sharply contrasted with a vivid Harlem dance number before mobile sets, comedy by Jimmie Gleason and Lilyan Tashman, crooning of Berlin’s “With You” and “Puttin’ On the Ritz” by Harry Richman and such varied items. Mr Menzies, the young man who designed the sots for “The Thief of Bagdad,” “Bulldog Drummond” and “Condemned,” is given much ered’.t for the Alice in Wjidcrland num•••. Responsibility for the entire pro 1 u/’ton, however, rests with John W. Co snl’iie, jr., who is young, educated and Irish. Mr Considine read l ewis Carroll at the ago of two, Marcel Proust when fix. Chic Sale when eight, Norman OoiL ias when nine and i half, and Ronald Firbank (in the original Greek) wuli aid ing his father run the Sullivan an<i Considine vaudeville circuit at a tim when the young Considine was plaving third base for the Essex Street Boys Club baseball team and Fife Corps in Spok ane. Air Menzies won a i award from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, sings tenor, throw:- righthanded, bats left handed, and thinks Carideo is a great quarterback. He can also juggle sixteen tennis balls on his big right toe but secs no reason why he should.

Joan Bennett, who is the Alice, <?f tho Earl Carroll Wonderland, was born on the Palisades, played opposite, Ronald and George Arliss, rarely bills no trumps, and doesn’t go to Agua Caliente very often. Irving Berlin, who wrote the music, has been the subject of an Alexander Woolcoot biography, was a private at Camp Upton, and once shopped traffic in Wall Street by playing “Aly Wife’s Gone To the Country” on a piano placed on top of a truck. His contacts with Wall Street are now usually effected by ten and three, which is seven to twelve in Hollywood, which is where Air Berlin is. He is, as .. matter of fact, composing the score of his first individual film production, “Love In A Cottage.” There are those who believe that if he breathes into it part of the charm that his “Alice in Wonderland” number has then the mighty moguls who make millions out of the cinema must gaze at the film turned out by a song writer and join in the Greek chorus behind Alice. • “Curioscr and curioscr! Dear, dear!

How queer everything is to-day! And yesterday things went on just as usual.” Ho'lywood and Wonderland have that in common.