ENTERTAINMENTS

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 73, Issue 429, 21 November 1930, Page 11

ENTERTAINMENTS

WANGANUI HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY SUMMER SHOW Arrangements arc well in hand in connection with the Summer Show to be held under the auspices of the Wanganui Horticultural Society in the Old Museum Buildings, Drew’s Avenue, to-day (Friday), at 2.30 p.m. The hon. secretary has already received intimation that growers in the rose section will be well represented, and this branch of the show alone will reward the patronage of the general public. Strong committees have been appointed to attend to the exhibits in the decorative and cut flowers section, and the indications are that the displays under these headings will be of unusual excellence. Lady friends are knidly asked to bring gifts of food for the afternoon tea stall, as arrangements have been oade to continue the serving of afternoon. tea. which has met with such in the past. SHOP DAY. As advertised elsewhere, a Shop Day will be held by the Fordell and Oko'.a ladies in the late Meat Freezing Co.’s premises to-day (Friday) November 21, from 9 a.m. Large quantities of lamb, produce, home-made cakes, jams, etc., will be on sale. The proceeds are for the Convent Jubilee.

GRAND THEATRE “TEMPLE TOWER’’ To-day and to-night will be the final screenings of the new Fox all-talking Movietone “Temple Tower,” which features further and more exciting exploits of IL S. McNeilc’s fearless adventurer, Kenneth Mac Kenna plays the role of Captain Hugh /Drummond and, among other things, throws lariats, climbs walls and chimneys, dodges falling weights, engages in various gun-battles, outwits several desperate criminals, including trie Masked Stranger. Donald Gallagher, director of the production is said to have combined a rapid-fire and highly-breathless story with a novel form of treatment which provides a delightful alternation of thrills and roars throughout the progress of the narrative. Marceline Day enacts the leading feminine role with Henry B- Walthall, Peter Cawthorne. Cyril Chadwick, Ivan Linow, A. B. Lane and Yorke Sherwood in the chief supporting parts. One of these men, by the way, is the Strangler himself. Previous notices hail Mac Kenna’s work as equal to the performances established in such outstanding notable Fox Movietone successes as “Adventures of 513.” “Love, Life and Laugh,” “South Sea Rose,” and “Pleasure Crazed.” The supports include “Hired and Fired.” comedy “So This Is Marriage” and Fox News.

MAJESTIC THEATRE. “SWING HIGH.” MUSICAL EXTR AV AG ANZA. Seven of the best song writers in America contributed six numbers to “Swing High,” Pathc’s musical circus romance, now being presented at the Majestic Theatre. -The result is that this production includes a song cycle that for variety of rhythm, romance and comedy, is the finest that has been presented since the inception of talking pictures. “Happiness Over the Hill,” sung by Fred Scott, was written by Henry Sullivan and Ray Egan. Sullivan also wrote the melody for “The Farmer’s Daughter,” a

comedy number sung by Daphne Pollard and John Shehan. The lyrics were written by John Ruskin. A notable feature of “Swing High’’ is the remarkable cast of players portraying the various roles in this dramatic love romance of the romantic circus days in the middle seventies. The list embraces among others Chester Conklin and Bon Turpin, famous screen comedians, George Fawcett, Robert Edcson. and Byrant Washburn, popular screen stars, Stcphin Fctchit. celebrated negra screen funmaker. Dorothy Burgess, stage star. Helen Twelvetrees, Daphne Pollard, Nick Stuart, Sally Starr, William Langan and Little Billy, famous midget. Packed with drama, novelty, thrill, action, music, song, beauty and charm,’ “Swing High” is one of the most- colourful, all-music, all-dialogue pictures thus far produced by Bathe. From the standpoints of colour and spectacle, it is brilliant, while from the viewpoints of art and appeal, it is supreme. An entire circus with forty acts was employed in the various ring scenes enacted before an audience of two thousand men, women and children. From start to finish the action is speedy, and E. B. Deer, the producer, aided by Joseph Santley, the director, devoted all their energies to the task of making “Swing High’’ one of the finest pictures of its kind ever filmed. Supported by sixteen all-star stage and screen players, who contributed the best their art and talents could supply, the producer, director, author and others identified with the production, are entitled to all the praise a distinctly superior screen achievement invariably invites.

GRAND THEATRE. TO-MORROW’S ATTRACTION. Sophisticated comedy-drama is seen to its best advantage in “He Knew Women,” which opens to-morrow at The Grand Theatre. It has clever, entertaining qualities that should delight all patrons with a taste for a good play dealing with the complications of polished society life. The hero (Lowell Sherman) is an author who has no il lusions about life, he is smooth and suave, full of witty and cynical reflections, yet with a pleasantness and appeal of manner that enslaves women. Beneath this sophisticated exterior is something better, “the second man,” with higher ideals, but it is seldom that this second man conies uppermost. He is about to marry a handsome widow (Alice Joyce), frankly for her money. He really loves a young girl (Francis Dade), who fights desperately for him, but he discourages her because she is desired by his friend, a handsome young millionaire (David Manners). The two men arc in sharp contrast, although good friends. The girl at last attempts to achieve her ends by an nouncing that she has been compromised by the author after she has agreed to be rhe wife of her younger admirer. Succeeding events hold the interest, and make up an amusing and arresting picture, with sparkling dialogue and a high standard of acting. The supports.

arc varied and interesting. John McCormack in the season’s most outstand ing picture “Song O’ My Heart” opens soon at this theatre. “LOOPING THE LOOP.” A STORY OF CIRCUS LIFE. “Looping the Loop.” showing at the Opera House to-morrow afternoon and evening is undoubtedly one of the greatest pictures of life in the, circus yet shown in this town. It deals with life behind the scenes, of the romance, comedy and pathos that enters into the lives of the artists who risk their lives to give the public, excitement. One of the features of the film is the most daring act ever seen on either stage or screen. It is the sensational looping the loon dive, in which the artist, War wick Ward, takes a flying leap from a platform hundreds of feet over the auditorium to go sliding at breakneck speed down a slide to do a complete loop and finally be caught by his partner waiting at the other end. Gasps of astonishment were hoard throughout the audience when the girl who was apparently new to the act missed the hold and the man went hurtling through the air to the ground. This picture stars Werner Krauss, Warwick Ward and Jenny Jugo. Comedies, gazettes and another of the popular music master series “Schuman” will also be presented. “THE UNHOLY THREE.” LON CHANEY ACCLAIMED. A GREAT TALKING PICTURE. Lon Chancy’s talking picture “The Unholy Three” now showing at the Re gent Theatre is worthy of the many appreciative references heard from pic-ture-goers. The principal scenes of the picture arc laid firs tin the environment of a circus side show section, and later in a bird and animal srop in which Chaney, in the disguise of an old -woman hides from the police who are seeking him for a murder. Tn the pet-shop sequences, Chaney reveals a new angle of his versatile talents, that of ventriloquism, by which he makes the parrots

“talk.’’ By the same method he makes the. dummy in the side-show sequences not only talk, but sing “Sweet Rosie O’Grady.” It is said that when the side-show scenes were filmed, the MetroGoldwyn Mayer studio looked like the combined Barnum-Bailey and Ringling Brothers Circus grounds, what with freaks, animals, trapeze performers, hula-hula dancers and other typical dc- , tails of a gaudy sideshow sector. Chaney, who achieved a distinguished niche, in filmdom for his impersonations and disguises in such pictures as “Road to Mandalay” and “The Hunchback of Notre Dame,” presents an entirely new aspect as a talking player. With a re sonant baritone voice and an uncanny facility for imitating characters’ voices, gleaned from his 20 years on the stage, it is said that, he, can literally “make up’’ his voice as he does his face so that it is difficult to guess just which of his vocal disguises ismost like his natural speech. Dramatic spots in “The Unlioly Three” include the fight in the sideshow after the ventriloquist attempts to pick the pockets of an onlooker; the mysterious murder on Christmas Eve; the scene in which the embittered midget sets loose an orangoutang so that he can attack the sideshow giant; and Chaney’s final scene in the courtroom where he is revealed by , tearing oft’ the old woman’s disguise. Chaney was born in Colorado Springs, Colorado, on April J. 1883. His first wor kin the theatre was as a stage hand. Later he became a comedy dancer, then a producer of vaudeville acts. He also piayed inburlesque and in grand

opera. In 1914 he entered pictures — first as a comedian, then as a “heavy” in “Hell Morgan’s Girl.” After “The Phantom of the Opera’’ and “The Hunchback of Notre Dame,’ he became famous. Refusing at first, like Chap lin, to make talking pictures because he believed that pantomime was the only true method of screen expression, he finally yielded and made a succcssfu 1 sound version of “The Unholy Three.” It was his first and last talking picture. Lon Chaney died on August 2G, 1930.