AMUSEMENTS

Camp News, Volume 1, Issue 9, 9 February 1940, Page 8

AMUSEMENTS

CITY AND EXHIBITION

KING’S THEATRE. One of the gayest and most exciting comedies to reach the screen for some time is being unreeled at the King’s Theatre under he title of “The Housekeeper’s Daughter.” The picture was produced and directed by Hal Roach, Hollywood’s famous producer of riotous and original comedy successes, such as the “Topper” series, “Merrily We Live,” etc. - It is being released by United Artists with a well-chosen cast headed by Joan Bennett, Adolphe Menjou, Peggy Wood, John Hubbard, Donald Meek and William Gargan. The new film is a fast moving, lively romance smartly fashioned to contain all the - elements of entertainment and an original idea which may sweep the country. Miss Bennett, portraying the alluring housekeeper’s daughter, leaves her underworld boy friend flat to return to her mother, who works for the socially prominent Randall family. Learning that the family has left town for the summer, the heroine is pleasantly surprised to discover that, the young and handsome scion of the family, played by John Hubbard, one of the screen’s new leading men, has decided to stay in town and brave the summer heat. Young Randall is determined to break into newspaper work and he accomplishes this feat very easily by using his father’s influence. Aided and abetted by the housekeeper’s daughter, he attaches himself to a murder mystery and from then on the new film proceeds at a terrific pace, introducing merry mix-ups and unexpected complications. High comedy is blended with rich romantic interludes, and the gayest scenes of the film revolve around a gang of underworld hoodlums who are scared off by a fireworks celebration. Hal Roach, personaly directed as well as produced “The Housekeeper’s Daughter” from the famous novel of the same name by Donald Henderson Clarke. The production was filmed from the screen play written by the practiced pens of Rian James and Gordon Douglas and boasts sprightly dialogue, tense situations and swiftly moving drama and romance. Miss Bennett is especially excellent as the glamorous brunette who causes collective commotion in the lives of five men, Mr. Menjou is extremely amusing as a screwy newspaperman, and William Gargan turns in a fine performance as Menjou’s stooge.

STATE THEATRE. Laurel and Hardy, Hollywood’s most prolific and popular comedy team, return to the screen in “The Flying Deuces,” their first featurelength comedy in more than a year at the State .Theatre. 'This time the veteran comics have taken to the airways as a background for their misadventures, a thrilling and hilarious climax being provided in the final sequence, when the boys, as two Foreign Legionnaires sentenced to die for desertion, take flight in an endurance ship.

There is the hilarious sequence where Stan encounters difficulty in

performing his abolutions at a French inn’s wash-stand. Later, planning of a double suicide is equally amusing. Audiences will be delighted to see how the pair withstand the assault of a squadron of soldiers with bottled champagne, and how they attack the problem of doing a regimental washing and ironing. /-

For good measure, Laurel has thrown in a harp solo played on a bed spring, and an eccentric dance done to the singing of Oliver.

Under the expert guidance of Producer Boris Morros —long highly versed in the art of musical embellishment of stage and screen product. Comedy situations are enhanced by the trick of musical sound—an innovation in the present-day field of screen comedy.

The supporting cast to Laurel and Hardy includes Jean Parker, leading lady, in the featured role of a French girl with whom Oliver Hardy falls in love; Reginald Gardiner, also featured, as her suspicious lieutenant husband; Charles Middleton as the Commandant of the Moroccan post of the Foreign Legion; Jean Del Vai and Clen Wilenchick as Sergeant and Corporal respectively; James Finlayson as a Jailer, and many others, the cast being a large one. Flying thrills in the airplane stunts are provided by Frank Clarke, one of the veteran fliers.

How the repercussions of a supposedly harmless joke precipitates a sensational libel suit, a murder and a chain of thrilling events, is dramatically unfolded in “Sued For Libel” at the State Theatre.

Featuring Kent Taylor . and Linda Hayes, the story presents Taylor as an enterprising reporter who dramatizes the news of the day on a local radio station owned by his paper. Richard Lane is seen as his slowthinking “stooge.”

When Miss Hayes, as a rival reporter, gives Lane the wrong information regarding the verdict of a sensational murder trial—merely as a gag—the “stooge” passes it on to Taylor. The news broadcaster immediately incorporates the phoney information in his programme with the result that both the station and the newspaper are sued on a 1,000,000 dollar libel charge.

In an effort to avert the suit, the reporter, the girl and the “stooge” turn amateur detectives, endeavour to dig up the past of the wealthy broker who has been slandered. Their activities involve them in a labyrinth of scandal and intrigue, a cold-blooded murder and a series of harrowing experiences. The manner in which they eventually succeed in their dangerous mission is said to provide nerve-ting-ling drama and a suspenseful climax.

Directed for RKO Radio by Leslie Goodwins, "Sued For Libel” features in the supporting cost Lilian Bond, Morgan Conway, Keye Luke and Roger Pryor. PLAZA THEATRE. Film audiences viewing Walter Wanger’s "Eternally Yours,” co-star-ring Loretta Young and David Niven,

and slated to begin a run at the Plaza Theatre, through United Artists release, are to be treated to the distinct thrill of diving headlong toward the New York World’s Fair from an airplane 15,000 feet high. Then a parachute will open and the “audience” will float earthward.

Producer Wanger sent a camera crew and two airplanes from Hollywood to New York to film a spectacular delayed-opening parachute leap from a plane into a bay near the Fair site. To give the jump realism and natural thrills, a special camera was constructed and encased, with its motor and a time-clock, inside a cork and rubber box.

The camera equipment was fastened to the parachute harness to record the wild gyrations normally made by a man’s body on a delayed opening jump, the shock of the open 7 ing, and the swinging that occurs until gravity steadies him down and he floats to safety. Since the camera always represents the audience in the filming of a picture, this unique chute jump will give theatre audiences an experience only one person in a million ever has — that which comes to those who “bail out.” The Wanger camera and its odd container were rather ingenious devices. The time-clock pulled the rip cord of the parachute 25 seconds after the drop was made from the plane. When - the box struck the water, it automatically closed a heavy glass window over the camera lens and becomes a floating, waterproof protector for the camera and its exposed film. The camera was so rigged that when the parachute opened the lens recorded a panorama of the earth and the Fair and the water. Paul Mantz and Frank Clark, two of Hollywood’s most famous stunt pilots, appear in the flying scenes for "Eternally Yours.” TUDOR THEATRE "Find Livingstone!” Exactly 70 years ago this October 16th, James Gordon Bennett barked these words to his crack reporter, Henry M. Stanley.

It was apparently the most hopeless assignment in all journalism. No one but a mad man would brave the terrors of unknown Africa to hunt for a missionary explorer from whom no word had come in two years.

How Stanley found Livingstone, how the world called the newspaperman “the most colossal liar of his age,” and how he later became the greatest hero of his era, is the story of the 20th Century-box picture, Darryl F. Zanuck’s production of “Stanley and Livingstone,”

Spencer Tracy, twice an Academy Award winner, portrays Stanley. Nancy Kelly, who rose into the front ranks of Movietown with her role in “Jesse James,” and Richard Greene.

' In 1937 Mrs. Martin Johnson, the famous explorer, led an expedition of 27 Hollywood players and technicians into the wild Tanganyika country of Africa. They began at Bagamoyo, on the coast opposite the island of Zanzibar, and retraced Stanley’s historic nine months’ trek in 1871. They spent five months in reaching Ujiji, the village where Stanley found Livingstone, filming the country, which had changed little since it first witnessed one of the most heroic adventures known to man.

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