“LUMMOX” AT GRAND

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 75, Issue 90, 16 April 1932, Page 18 (Supplement)

“LUMMOX” AT GRAND

DOUBLE FEATURE BILL. “BE YOURSELF” ALSO SHOWING. To-day a double feature programme opens at the Grand Theatre. “Lummox” is showing with “Be Yourself.” Accompanied by a chorus of fifty chorus girls and men and a forty-piece symphony orchestra, Fannie Brice, mounted on a pedestal above a sea of billowing, clouds, sings her new number, “Kickin’ a Holo in the Sky,” in the all-talking, all-singing United Artists picture, ”Be Yourself.” The scene, one of ’»e many spectacular super-revue numbers of the picture, is a maze of mechanical contrivances, gears and pulleys, which actuate disappearing columns and movable “clouds.” “Be Yourself,” one of the most elaborate musical revues ever presented by the Joseph M. Schenck organisation, was directed by Thornton Freeland. Although the “Kickin’ a Hole in the sky set is the most complicated one ever to be constructed on the United Artists lot from an engineering

standpoint, two or three others match its magnitude for sheer fantasy. In support of Miss Brice are Robert Armstrong, Gertrude Astor, Harry Green, G. Pat Collins, Budd Fine and Jimmy Tolson, the fourteen-year-old “blues” singer. Brilliantly acted and directed, “Lummox,” Herbert Brenon’s production for United Artists is now showing at the Grand Theatre. Winifred Westover, principal woman in the cast, literally living the rule of Miss Hurst’s heroine, faced the cameras on a motionpicture set for the first time in eight years. Only when Brenon instituted a nation-wide search for a screen “Lummox” did Miss Westover decide to emerge from private life. Believing herself to be “destined by fate” to play “Lummox,” she competed against more than 100 Hollywood and New Y r ork stars, leading women and character actresses for the year’s most coveted role and triumphed after a dramatic dash ~ oss the continent to enlist the author’s aid in persuading Brenon that she was the one to bring the title character to life on the silversheet. Among the other well-known screen and stage players in “Lummox” aye Ben Lyon, in the romantic lead; William Collier, Jr., Edna Murphy and Myrtle Stedman. Sylvia Sidney gets her exotic personality from a Roumanian father and a Russian mother. * Marlene Dietrich. Paramount star of “ Shanghai Express.” was once a pupil of Max Reinhardt.