ENTERTAINMENTS

Manawatu Standard, Volume LX, Issue 118, 17 April 1940, Page 3

ENTERTAINMENTS

STATE THEATRE. ‘•QUICK MILLIONS.” Ihe map still shows plenty of spaces where the hand of the Jones Family has never set foot and so long as this is so, moviegoers can rely on excellent entertainment from this nomadic scrtlen family. Their latest; jaunt is to the Grand Canyon, where they have inherited a gold mine, in their new 20th Century-Fox production, “Quick Millions,” which opens to-day atr the State Theatre. Good all round fun, the Joseph I iofimnn Stanley Rauh screen plays brings the Joneses hack to Marry ville front their recent trip to Hollywood only to send them packing again when they receive word of the inheritance. So it.’.s off to the West again, and what with Injun ghosts, fake geologists, bullets, bandits, and gun-fights, they strike it rich in their richest vein of fun. “Quick Millions,” the title, would seem to refer rather to (ho laughs in the film than what the. Joneses make from their mine, for it costs them ten for every dollar they take out. There are a million laughs from every Jones, and the .family includes .Ted Prouty, Spring Cyington, Ken Howell. George Ernest., June . Carlson. Florence Jtoborts and Billy Mahan. Also featured in the film are Eddie Collins, popular littlo comedian, Robert Slmw and Helen Ericson. The latter two supply the romance of the story, whose excitement and fun begins when Lawyer Collins takes over the Joneses' interests and acts as prospecting guide for the family. At last, the miraculous Sonja Henic appears in a picture as American as an ice cream cone! A dazzling modern girl, having a modem good time on a co-ed campus, wearing swank clothes, keeping swell dates—that’s Sonja as you'll see her in “My Lucky Star,” her new hit for 20th Cpntury-Fcx, which opens to-day at the State Theatre. A credit to Harrvl F. Zanuek and to everyone who had a hand in its making, this is a picture that winks and glitters with fun and romance and the magic of stars hanging low on a still frosty night. It has songs and laughter that scent to sail through the air like ski jumpers and Sonja’s magnificent “Alice in Wonderland’’ ice ballot—climaxing what is by all odds her happiest screen story —is a thing to make you cry out in wonder and delight. KOSY THEATRE. “PENITENTIARY.” A prison story of unusual . promise, .Columbia's “Penitentiary” is scheduled to show to-day at the Kosy Theatre. This is the dramatic tale of a politically ambitious warden who finds that life inside a State penitentiary goes deeper than mere individual desires. Walter Connolly. John Howard, Jean Parker and Robert Bnrrat play the leading roles in the , picture, while Mare Lawrence, Dick Curtis, Arm Doran and Arthur llohi are seen in lesser parts. Connolly has lately been seen in “Nothing Sacred”: Howard has been playing in the'“Bulldog Drummond” pictures, and Miss Parker lias recently been seen in “Life Begins with Love.” The story concerns William Jordan, who is sent to prison by a district attorney aiming for the governor’s mansion. Jordan accidentally killed the son of t:ho State’s most influential citizen because of an insult to a girl. So Thomas Mathews sends Jordan to the penitentiary. Six years later, Mathews is appointed warden of the prison, another step towards the governorship. llis daughter, Elizabeth, goes along. In prison, broken in spirit and in health, Mathews finds Jordan, the boy lie sent away. A chain of grim circumstances in which there are a murder, an attempted prison break, and a romance between Jordan and the warden’s daughter, brings Mathews fact to face with the most dramatic crisis of his life. John Brnlini directed “Penitentiary.” Cheers of the crowd, thrilling exploits by college athletes, youthful romance and plenty of campus flirt are some of the features in Columbia’s “All American Sweetheart,” novel college picture which shows at the Kosy Theatre to-day.