BRITISH DRAMA LEAGUE

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 79, Issue 162, 13 July 1935, Page 14

BRITISH DRAMA LEAGUE

WANGANUI FESTIVAL. THIRD ANNUAL OFFERING. Du ing the first week of August the V'anganui branch of the British Drama League is to hold its third annual festival. After trying their young wings for two years in the Repertory Theatre, the Area Committee has decided that the time has come to«ofler Wanganui a full-sized festival of three nights in the Opera House. Other towns —Hastings, Timaru Palmerston North, as well as the tour centres, have a real live drama week, and Wanganui is determined not to be behind hand this year. There has been an encouraging response, seven societies having entered so'far. In these days of mechanisation and large-scale splendour and achievement there is being felt more and more the need for the human touch and the individual effort. Everywhere groups are springing up and experiencing for themselves the joys of co operative social creative effort and expression. In the festivals these groups meet to pool their resources and to give the public an opportunity of enjoying the fruits of the months of hard study and practice. They are not all Garbos or Laurel and Hardies, but their work has the same interest as the football match in which “our Jimric” is playing and they give us an opportunity of seeing p ays that the screen does not handle—miniatures of great interest. While he doesn’t boast of the fact. Tudio Carminati, co-starred with Mary Ellis in Paramount’s “Paris in Spring.” is an Italian count. His oficial title k Count Tullio Carminati di Srambilla.

A.though “Little Miss Marker,” Shirley Temple’s first Paramount, picture, is establishing! now theatre records, Paramount executives believe that “Now and Forever/’ Shirley’s latest picture for that company, is even greater in entertainment \a.ue than her first picture! Harold Lamb, author and Guggenheim prize winner for his volumes on the Crusades, is now acting as technical advisor on Cecil B. !De Mille’s current Paramount production, •• The Cruside.-.” on which he also worked on the script. More than 20 extremely feminine Spanish gowns characterise Marlene Dietrich's current wardrobe pi Paramount’s “Carnival in Spain." All of the gowns were designed for her byTravis Ban ton, leading Hollywood stylist. Penguins captured in the Antarctic by members of the second Byrd Antarctic expedition are being brought to the United States in refrigerated i-wimming pools, according Io the Paramount cameramen who accompanied the polar trek. Virginia Weidler, seven year-old Paramount featured player, is the youngest in a family of six children, all of whom work in pictures. Their mother was once a grand opera singer in Germany. Whether or not Gary Cooper's charm wears well with age will be determined in his forthcoming Paramount drama, “Peter IbbeUon.” He will appear as approximately B<J years obi in the film’s final sequence. Mickey Mouse. The versatility of Mickey Mouse is semingly inexhaustible. Already a leading star of the sc.een. an idol of children, and a world influei.ee for good will among mankind, he recently became a star of the air waves. Sponsored and accompanied by h's creator, Walt Disney. Mid re Mouse was heard over a nation-wide United States ladio broadcast whi*eh emanated from Hollywood and which pleased more than 10,000,000 listeners fur mure than an hour. The progiamme included excerpts from Mickey's new pictures: music, intimate con\orations with Walt, and sundry didoes and capers of .Mickey’s companions in •earicon land, including Minnie, Pluto, Claribelle Cow, Donald Duck, ami many others. Not long afterwards another group of Disney characters took vocalised form upon the radio waves of London when C. group of s'ngcrs, actors, and mu- « cians began a series of broadcasts of Disney’s famous Silly Symphonies.