MAJESTIC

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 1, Issue 96, 14 December 1931, Page 6

MAJESTIC

TO-NIGHT Famous writers and scientists, down through th© ages, have looked far off into space and regarded th© great planet Mars with speculative eyes. Of all the great planets of the universe, Mars is th© closest to, the earth and thus ©asiest to study through the powerful telescopes. Many writers, encouraged by the belief of some astronomers that Mars is inhabited, have given free rein to their imaginations and written at great length of the race which inhabits that planet. Jules Yerne, H. G. Wells and Edgar Rice Burroughs, perhaps, are the best known men of letters who have used Mars as a setting for their fantastic fiction.

Various writers have pictured "the Martians in many different ways. Many have given them large heads and small bodies, other s have given them peculiar fish-like shapes on the theory that the atmosphere of the planet is very rare and consequently their breathing apparatus must vary greatly from ours and resemble that of creatures that we know. In "Just Imagine," great De Sylva, Brown and Henderson Fox movietone musical comedy, successor to "Sunny Side Up," Mars supplies the background, for the first time in pictures, for some of the most important sequences of the production. Mars, as imagined by this great combination of authors and song writers, differs from the conceptions of Verne and Wells and Burroughs in many important details. They have pictured the Martians as an exotic race of people, ruled over by a beautiful and voluptuous queen, with giant slaves always at hand to do their bidding. From this fundamental conception they develop situations glowing with imagination. A greafc cast is assembled in "Just Imagine," which will be seen and heard at the Majestic Theatre tonight. It includes E1 Brendel, Maureen O'Sullivan, John Garrick, Marjorie White, Frank Albertson, Kenneth Thomson, Hobart Bosworth, Joyzelle, Mischa Auer, Wilfred Lucas, Sidney De Gray and Ivan Linow. Seymour Felix created and staged the dance numbers. He performed similarly for "Sunny Side Up," the first De Sylva, Brown and Henderson musical screen comedy.