LAUGHTER ALL THE WAY

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 412, 21 July 1928, Page 15

LAUGHTER ALL THE WAY

“BRINGING UP FATHER” AT THE MAJESTIC If you have been warned by the doctor to avoid loughing, don’t, for your health’s sake, go to the Majestic Theatre this week, because the management has laid itself out to pack into the entertainment just as much merriment as two and a-fcalf hours can hold. After this word of warning to the dangerously ill (and our conscience would never have let us rest if we had not given it) one may turn completely round and say to the rest of Auckland, do, for your health’s sake, go to the Majestic and laugh yourself into contentment with “Bringing Up Father,” the film of the world-famous cartoons,. and with “The College Widow,” another comedy of length and breadth. Further, there is “Jerry,” the boxing kangaroo, who does his best with his mittens against a boy sparring partner, Eugene Donovan, and under the ring managership of Jack Clarke. “Bringing Up Father” as everybody knows, from the cartoons, is mainly the bringing of father up with “a round turn,” or .more accurately, with a round rolling pin. Jiggs made a fortune in some efficient American fashion, and he is quite prepared to hold the “bar” up with his old pals, but not so Maggie, the wife, who is determined to step, high, wide and loose into the highest of society. So Jiggs has to trail a poodle after him, keep his coat on at the table, and not wander about the dining room in his stockinged feet. Polly Moran, of “The Callahans and the Murphys” fame, has the role of Maggie, the untamed shrew, virago, social climber and Marie Dressier, that capable comedienne, is Maggie’s sister-in-law, Mrs. “Dinty” Moore. J. Farrell McDonald, who last appeared in “Cradle Snatchers,” is the down-trodden Jiggs. who contrives, by devious ways to elude the watchful eye of bis spouse and meet the boys in “Dinty’s” bar. The picture is crammed full of humorous incidents, all skilfully woven into a broad plot. Jiggs’s beautiful daughter—and she is beautiful —meets a real live lord, and the chance of a romance sends Maggie almost into hysterics. There is furnishing in hot haste and the Jiggs house is soon complete, as the sub title says, “with some furniture which goes back to Henry VIII., and the rest which goes back on Wednesday week. But the real live lord seems big enough to forgive the marvellous attempts at etiquette and he still calls on Jiggs’s daughter. The family moves to a palace on Long Island, and Jiggs is soon left completely out of the running in the social stakes. Then Maggie is brought to her senses by a near tragedy and two couples seem to be on the route to happiness ever afterwards. Dolores Costello and William Collier, Jun., have the main roles in a refreshingly novel comedy, “The College Widow,” an excellent story of a girl who succeeded in recruiting a football team for her college. Atwater is a dud school at football, and Dolores, as the president’s daughter, realises that her father’s position will be jeopardised unless the team wins the championship. So she sets out to lure famous footballers to the college, and they come in their scores. But the team gets together before the match and finds that each of them have been duped unde? the same promise. There is plenty of exciting football in the film.

Under Mr. J. Whiteford-Waugh the Majestic Orchestra plays a splendid programme, including “Utopia, Limited,” a fantasy, “Rio Rita,” and “The Jewels of the Madonna.”