NEW REGENT

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 238, 28 December 1927, Page 15

NEW REGENT

“THE ROUGH RIDERS”

A grudge fight for the championship of a rough and ready regiment is one of the exciting incidents in “The Rough Riders’” which is now being shown at the New Regent Theatre. Even the most rabid fight fan will get a thrill out of the punishing encounter between the two young giants, Charles Farrell, leading man, and Fred Kohler. Kohler is the top-sergeant and Farrell a sergeant in the Paramount production. Both are bruisers and they have an intense dislike for each other in the screen story. The fight settled once and for all the question whether actors really hurt each other in screen fights. Director Victor Fleming was a well-known athlete and boxer once on a time. James Howe, fix’st camera-man, used to be the fly-weight champion of the Pacific coast. Realism was the watchword. Smashing punches that went true to their mark Ift marks and welts on the faces of both men. Twelve hundred Rough Riders forgot it was a film fight and went wild with excitement. Farrell and Charles Emmett Mack stage another battle over Mary Astor and this, too, is thrilling. Noah Beery and George Bancroft add a few tussles that prove funny semi-wind-up affairs. The programme is augmented by Maurice Guttridge’s superb orchestra in a grand organ and orchestral entracte. Eddie Tlorton at the organ includes another novelty song film entitled “Auld Lang Syne,” and Wallace and Gennet, of J. C. Williamson celebrity vaudeville, are seen in soft shoe and eccentric dancing. Wallace and Gennett, who return to Australia on Friday, are making their last few appearances in New Zealand. These clever dancers, who have scored such a big success in their short season here, present an entirely new act introducing some clever and original work —the male partner’s eccentric hornpipe being both very funny and clever, while Miss Wallace, in both double dances with her partner, and in the solo work, is the very perfection of grace and charm. Wallace and Gennett are appearing both afternoon and evening, to-day and to-morrow only. The SLipporting picture programme includes an exceptionally funny screen comedy, and an interesting Regent Budget of topical world’s news.

Eddie Horton, at the organ, is receiving big applause this week, liis items being particularly good and well chosen for the Christmas season. Opening with “The Holy City,” he plays “Auld Lang Syne” to a very funny cartoon film, the audience joining in the singing with great gusto. The applause which follows shows the popularity of this latter item. Maurice Guttridge and the Regent operatic orchestra are well up to their usual high standard, their rendering of Rubenstein’s “Reve Angelique,” with organ accompaniment, being a real musical treat.