ENTERTAINMENTS

Manawatu Standard, Volume LX, Issue 127, 29 April 1940, Page 3

ENTERTAINMENTS

KOSY THEATRE. ‘•KENTUCKY.” Showing to-day at, the Ivosy Theatre, “Kentucky,” a 20th Century-Fox production filmed in tcchnieolour, is a, romance of the Blue Grass State, and it features in the loading roles Loretta Young, Richard Greene and Walter Brennan. Also included in the cast are Douglas Durnbrijlc, Karen Alorley and Moroni Olsen. “Kentucky” contains the most spectacular climax of any picture in recent years as it presents, for the first time in the history of motion pictures, the Kentucky Derby filmed in tcchnieolour. Much of the picture was filmed on location in the heart of the Blue Grass country and the luxuriant beauty of the land where t.ho thoroughbreds roam the meadows is reproduced on the screen in complete naturalness through the perfection of tcchnieolour. Two of tho most Talented children in tho entertainment business combined their highly specialised efforts in the making of “Breaking the Ice.” These children are 11-year-old Bobby Breen and six-year-old Irene Dare. Breen, the star of the picture, and a lop-ranking singer of radio and screen, sings five new numbers, in a story which has an appeal both to youngsters and adults. Miss Dare, who is making her film debut in “Breaking the Ice,” is the youngest figure-skater in the world, and before she was lured to Hollywood, was known throughout the Middle West as “the baby Sonja Ilenie.” This child, with a record of starring in 17 ice-shows at her early age, seems destined for top honours both in films and the rink. MAYFAIR THEATRE. “THE MAN THEY COULD NOT HANG.” One of the most amazing aspects of civilisation is its constant striving for progress. Every day records are broken, old achievements are improved upon and new heights are reached. Typical of the never-ending search for better things has been the progress of Hollywood. For, aside from the technical improvement in tho making of pictures, llollywoodians are always finding new and better story-tell-ing techniques and stronger and subtler ways of achieving effects. One of the outstanding yardsticks of the film colony’s growth has been the quality and nature of the horror-films, the newest of which, Columbia's “The Man They Could Not Hang,” now stars Boris Karloff at the Mayfair Theatre. Way back, in the days of “The Perils of Pauline,” horror was evoked from the audience by the rather simple expedient of giving the villain a hook for a hand. The first real purveyor of horror was of course Lon Chancy, euphemistically known as “flic man with a thousand faces.” Chancy used to shock his audience into attention by the compelling physical appearance of his make.up in such films as “Tile Phantom the Opera” and “The Hunchback of Notre Dame.” Lucille Glcasan, who plays the happy but blundering wife in Republic's Higgins’ Family comedy, “The Covered ’trailer,” showing at tho Mayfair Theatre to-day, is anything but hapless in real life. Even her husband. James Gleason, admits it.

“Ever since the day I left the army and married Luc'llc in Oakland, California, more than 25 yoars ago, I’ve been a lucky chap. And not many men will admit that about their wives in public and after so many years of married life.” Airs Gleason intended to become a domestic science teacher, but treated a precedent in her family by going on the stage. A beautiful girl matches wits with dangerous spies, and the hero falls prey to a giant “mechanical man” in "The Iron Monster,” the sixth breath-taking episode of “The Phantom Creeps,” 12-chapter Universal serial spectacle which shows to-day at the Mayfair Theatre with Bella Lugosi, Robert Kent, Dorothy Arnold and Regis Teomev it. the leading roles.