AMUSEMENTS

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 20077, 25 October 1939, Page 5

AMUSEMENTS

MAJESTIC THEATRE PAT O’BRIEN IN “GARDEN OF THE MOON” AND “NANCY DREW, DETECTIVE” Music and comedy are the two basic ingredients of “The Garden of the Moon.” the Warner Bros, production based upon the Saturday Evening Post story of the same name, which is delighting big audiences at the Majestic Theatre, with Pat O'Brien, Margaret Lindsay and John Payne in the featured roles. The picture is based on the recent Saturday Evening Post serial of flic same name. The story deals with a hot and tricky feud between a hotel manager, played by O'Brien, and an impertinent young band leader, played by Payne, who in this picture makes his debut as a singing, romantic star. Five new tunes by Johnny Mercer. Harry W arren and A 1 Dubin are introduced. Joe Venuti's swing band furnishes the captivating melody. In excellent contrast is the second film, “Nancy Drew. Detective,” the first picture in what bids fair to be a highly-populnr series, with Bonita Granville in the title role and Frankie Thomas, talented youngster from the New York stage, as her boy friend and “Watson.” The story is concerned with the heroine’s successful solving of the kidnapping of a wealthy old spinster who mysteriously disappeared the day after she announced a gift of £50,000 to the girls’ school which Nancy attends. In her quest of and eventual rescue of the olcl lady, Nancy is given valiant—and smart —assistance by her boy friend, Ted Nickerson. On account of the length of the programme, sessions commence at 1.45 and 7.30 p.m.

KING’S THEATRE “INSPECTOR IIORNLEIGII": MYSTERY THRILLER An amazing new detective, who collects rare stamps and clever murderers with equal calm, is introduced to screen audiences in "Inspector Hornleigh,” the 20th Century production which opens to-day at the King s Theatre, “Inspector Hornleigh,” a familiar and popular radio character throughout Europe, is portrayed on the screen by Gordon Harker, while Alastair Sim supplies the comedy relief as Sergeant Bingham, his bungling aide. The mystery, which is so completely baffling that even Inspector Hornleigh himself does not suspect the actual criminal until a second before he “collars” him. starts out with a simple little plan to rifle the Budget bag of the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Then the porter of a iittle wayside inn is murdered, and before it is ended, two more men are killed and an empire almost topples. Among those involved in the mystery are the Chancellor’s secretary and his beautiful fiancee, who owns the inn which employed the murdered porter and where the Chancellor took tea on the fateful afternoon. Out of a mystifying mass of suspects, Inspector Hornleigh is required to discover tire murderer. How he does it makes for what has been hailed as one of the most refreshing, suspense-filled and entertaining films to come to the screen this season.

—“Bachelor Mother”: Uproarious Comedy Hit, Friday—

Two of the screen’s greatest comedy stars in a picture that will keep you chuckling for weeks. Watch out for Ginger Rogers and David Niven in “Bachelor Mother,” which comes to the King’s Theatre on Friday. Delightful romance, sparkling comedy, and someone else’s baby: that's “Bachelor ■Mother.” The fun is built round the finding and adoption of a foundling baby which David Niven believes to be Ginger Rogers’. Miss Rogers' trial as an amateur mother and her efforts to bring up the baby with Niven’s would-be helpful but misguided advice should keep audiences in gales of laughter.

REGENT THEATRE SEQUEL TO “LIVES OF A BENGAL LANCER": “STORM OVER BENGAL" India is to-day one of the few countries which still retain the colourful, national spectacles of the past, and in “Storm Over Bengal,” at the Regent Theatre, the reckless soldier of fortune who holds the attention of» the audience in the person of Patric Knowles moves against a setting of splendour, mingled with the mystery of the East. He and Colin Tapley (who was born in Dunedin), with the aid of Halliwell Hobbes, Douglas Dumbrille. and Rochelle Hudson, are the mainstays of a wonderful story of the quelling of a rebellion. The tale commences in a distant outpost in India, where two brothers are in love with the same girl. It is dramatic and gripping. The brothers are members of the famous Bengal Lancers, and they quarrel over the girl, and for a while it looks like professional disaster for one of them, but in the end tradition and a natural love for danger bring them together again when the Empire is menaced.

—Friday: First N.Z. Screening of Charles Laughton i,n “Jamaica Inn” — Charles Laughton adds another brilliant characterisation to his career in “Jamaica Inn,” which will have its first New Zealand screening at the Regent Theatre on Friday. Laughton is remembered for his immortal Bligh in “Mutiny on the Bounty,” for the delightful Ruggles in “Ruggles of Red Gap,” and many other brilliant roles in pictures. Charles Laughton is one of the most remarkable men of the films to-day. Laughton, as Sir Humphrey Pengallan, squire of Cornwall. entertainer of the nobility, yet withal the evil genius behind the nefarious doings of the gangs of wreckers who haunted the nearby coast, adds another great characterisation to his list of successes. Here is a story of a lonely inn on the bleak Cornwall moors, not far from the coast. Its name was evil, coaches whisked past and no man knew what horrors its ever-closed shutters hid. Yet it was to “Jamaica Inn” that Mary Yellan went when her mother died, to join her aunt and the man her aunt married, Joss Merlyn. The evils of the inn, its 'dread secret, and the gatherings of the wreckers, she was ail too soon to learn, to make her way in frenzied haste to Sir Humphrey for his protection. Little did she know lie was the evil genius who guided her uncle Joss and his band of cut-throats. Charles Laughton has the colourful, sinister part of the squire, the man behind the gang whose being is known only to Joss Merlyn. His strain of insanity gives room for expansive characterisation,