AMUSEMENTS

Opotiki News, Volume II, Issue 256, 8 November 1939, Page 4

AMUSEMENTS

“IF ! WERE KING” A lomantie rogue from the Paris underworld rider of France because he killed one of the King’s enemies in a street brawl, makes love to a haughty princess in defiance of royal authority, rallies the half-starved people of Paris to the defence of a king who has all but forgotten them and drives a powerful enemy fr.om the very gates of the city- in Paramount’s “I .1 Were King,” Frank Lloyd's glorious story of Francois A’ilion, which comes to-night to the screen of the Regent Theatre. Ronald Column, in the most romantic role he has ever played, will be seen as France’s great medieval hero whose verse caused t-lie proudest hearts in the realm to flutter and whose courage rallied the Paris populace into battle against the Duke of Burgundy. His sweetheart is Frances Dee", star of “Wells Fargo,” Frank Lloyd’s brilliant production of a season ago.

“BOYS TOWN” Spencer Tracy and Mickey Rooney, re-united for the first time since their memorable performances in “Captain’s Courageous,” which won Tracy the Academy Award, are starred! in ‘‘.Boys Town,” whit'll opens next Saturday at the Regent Theatre. For the first time in his career Tracy portrays a living man on the screen, Father Edward J. Flanagan, one of the greatest humanitarians of this day, who served as technical adviser on the production. True-life story of Father Flanagan, the film reveals.. his dramatic twenty-one year struggle to found a home for neglected and abandoned boys. More than a year ago the studio became interested: in Boys Town, the only incorporated village of its kind in the world. This city of little men, governed and operated by youngsters* who range in age from six to eighteen, has a population of 275, of which 200 are boys, and is situated on the main highway west of Omaha, Nebraska. It was from Father Flanagan’s files, the records left by his boys, that Director Norman Taurog and scenarists John Meehan and Dore Schary t'Ollnd the rich material for "Boys Town.” In gripping tbrms of human drama, it tells the battle waged by Father Flanagan to save boys from lives of crime and his problem with one boy who thought he was too tough for Boys Town. ‘