AUSTRALIAN COMPOSER

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 74, Issue 143, 19 June 1931, Page 11

AUSTRALIAN COMPOSER

SUCCESS IN OLD COUNTRY. SCORES FOR SEVERAL PLAYS MUSIC AND TALKING PICTURES. AUCKLAND, June 16. “There has beeu a decided slump in the musical film owing to the fact that the market has been flooded with that type of picture,” said Air. Dudley Glass, a successful young Australian operatic composer, who arrived by the Niagara yesterday after having had a large number of his works produced in London and New York. “It is significant,” he said, “that when the highly popular musical play, ‘Fifty Million Frenchmen,’ was made into a talking picture in America recently they left out all the music and made a straight comedy of it. Undoubtedly musical filing will conic back, but not for some time.’” Since Air. Glass left Melbourne six years ago, he wrote the music for “The Beloved Vagabond,” tho musical version of W. J. Locke’s famous play which enjoyed over 100 performances at the Duke of York’s Theatre, London, in 1927. Other plays for which he composed musiv were “This and That” at the Regent Theatre, London, “Colour Blind” at the Duke of York’s, and “The Toymaker of Nuremburg,” produced at the Kingsway Theatre last Christinas. This piece was written in collaboration with Austin Strong, or “Seventh Heaven” fame, and will be revived next Christmas. When Mr. Glass informed his col laborator that he was returning to Australia, Mr. Strong said: “Be sure and see my park when you pass through Auckland.” It transpired that the well-known playwright’s original profession was that of a landscape surveyor and that he had laid out Corn wall Park many years ago. Another collaborator with Air. Glass was Adrian Ross, who wrote the lyiics for many famous musical plays including “The Merry Widow,” The Dollar Princess” and Lilac Time. During a recent visit to New "York Mr. Glass was engaged on a musical version of George Barr McCutcheon’s novel, “Graustark.” Among the people he met were Oscar Strauss, the composer of “The Chocolate Soldier” and the “Waltz Dream,” who is now composing for the talking pictures, and Carl Laemmle, the film magnate, whose biography has just been written by the celebrated John Drinkwater. The best plays in New York, said Mr Glass, were “Green Pastures,” embodying the Negro idea of Heaven, “The Barretts of Wimpore Street,” being the biography of Robert Browning. Noel Coward's play “Private Lives and Vicki Baum’s “Grand Hotel,” pic turing life in a big Berlin hotel in the course of 36 hours. This was^ probably the greatest success on the New A ork stage to-day. Tn London the biggest success was “The Naughty Duchess’ with Yvonne Arnaud. It was interest ing to find that the Coliseum had bee < converted into a temporary home for operetta, commencing with ••White Horse Inn.” a magnificent spectacle from Germany. On the whole, musical plays were returning Io the romantic style after a surfeit of jazz. “Eldorado,” a play with music written by Mr Glass, is at present on tour through England.