WITH THE MOVIE STARS.

Waikato Times, Volume 103, Issue 17326, 11 February 1928, Page 17 (Supplement)

WITH THE MOVIE STARS.

Hamilton’s Film Production. Wide interest is being taken in the proposal to make a film production in Hamilton. The contest for a local scenario is likely to bring forth many stories, from which it should be possible to select a good comedy-drama. The idea is to work in as much “local colour” as possible. Surely much romance and sensation could be set against the background of the lake and the river. Why, there could be a struggle for life on the watertower or the traffic bridge 1 And why not use our butter Or glaxo factories? That would be “local colour” with a vengeance in this district in which one hears so much of the doings of the farmers. “Abie’s Irish Rose” in Pictures. “Abie’s Irish Rose,” the play that startled the critics by running six years in New York, will find its way to the screen as a Paramount picture, and here are the selections for the characters: —Nancy Carroll, Buddy Rogers, Jean Hersholt, J. Farrell McDonald, Winter Hall (the New Zealander), Cornelius Pretel, Bernard Gorcy, Ida Kramer, Rosa Rosanova. To Go While the Going’s Good. “Two more pictures and I’m through,” said Mae Murray, the screen star. “Then it’s back to David.” “You are really going to retire?” she was asked. “Yes, I mean it,” was her reply. “It is hard to tear myself away from a public that has been so wonderfully nice to me. But in retiring after two more pictures 1 shall do so with all the halos around my head. All of us must retire some time. I prefer to do so while I am slill a star.” David is Prince David Mdivani of Georgia in the Caucasus. What’s in a Name? Some person connected with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer decided that “Annie Laurie” was much too tame a title for the picture, so now this production is flitting over the American continent as “The Ladies from Hell,” as the kilted soldiers were called during the World War. Movies Patch Matrimonial Squabbles. That the cinema is a great healer of matrimonial disturbances, is the opinion of Mr J. A. R. Cairns, the Thames Police Court magistrate. Mr Cairns, speaking at a luncheon given by the British Motion Picture Adverfisers in London, revealed his faith in fjhe cinema. “One of the advantages of being married is that I never take differences of opinion between husband and wife too seriously,” he said. "It is often not a family quarrel at all, but a matter of principle.. The husband is trying to score a point against his wife, and vice versa. Nearly always I adjourn these matrimonial difficulties sine die, and suggest that the husband should take his wife to the cinema. It is a ruse that often succeeds. The cinema has brought joy and happiness into the streets that not so many years ago were drab indeed.

“It is not the function of the cinema to preach sermons, but I say the human story told in a human way, dealing with the triumphs of goodness over meanness and vice, makes up the splendour of life. “The cinema is the greatest civilising factor of our times,” was his final praise.