WITH SAX APPEAL

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 454, 8 September 1928, Page 16

WITH SAX APPEAL

JAZZ AND BRIGHT COMEDY AT THE REGENT Super-experts in the art of “sax appeal,” Tom Katz and his band played themselves into an immense popularity at the New Regent Theatre last evening and Bebe Daniels, the most alluring of screen comediennes, shone out in the brightest of bright comedies. A wholly satisfying entertainment, from Maurice Guttridge’s overture to the final flicker of comedy, has been built up by the management for this week, evidently to mark the return of spring and the proverbial turning of one’s thought to light and pleasant things. And in the month of the Southern world’s reawakening, one can do little better than turn one’s ears to Tom Katz and one’s eyes to Bebe Daniels. In their scarlet and green and gold and with a military precision of movement Tom Katz and his boys manoeuvred on to the stag© and took the house by storm in five minutes. Their ; first movement was a kind of ambush. Nought appeared before the curtain but six shining saxophones, graduated from the biggest and boldest bass ever seen here to a high and wailing soprano. Then after a melodious opening the band burst forth in the glamour of a parade afid the “Crooning Bellboys” played like jazz princes and marched like West Point cadets. After the martial burst the parade quickly stood easy and, relapsing from military discipline, began to frolic in music. They became cats on the housetops and other playful creatures which express their emotions in melody—like the poets. Another change and they were coons on the plantation, and yet another and old King Jazz was up on his throne and holding court. A little light opera and the parade suddenly recovered its dignity and moved off in column of files to intricate manoeuvres and lilting tunes. Finally Tom Katz took his bow. The storm of applause lasted for five minutes, but Tom was adamant, there was to be no more. So the neatest novelty in the musical line for years was finished. “The Fifty-Fifty Girl” was the big film on the hundred per cent, programme. Delightful Bebe Daniels was

made the acquaintance of Jim Donahue under highly improper circumstances*— briefly, in a train, in a tunnel—and being perfectly satisfied in her own mind exactly what sort of a person he was, she froze him out of her existence. But an uncle left them joint owners of a gold mine in the red-hot Western town of Quartzville, where everyone drank gallons. Kathleen believed that a woman could do anything which a man could do and, just to prove it, she bet she could run the mine while Jim did the domestic side of the business. There was some rare comedy before the thrills began and the opposing crooks, to whom murder was almost a spare-time amusement, started their fun in the depths of the mine. Bobby Vernon brought laughs thick and fast in “The Bug Hunter,” a comedy of an escaped and wily insect, on loan from the zoological park, and there was an amusing cartoon study starring Dinky Doodle. Paramount’s “Eyes of the World” brought one up to date with the latest events, including Nobile’s tragic trip to the froze* wastes. Maurice Guttridge and his orchestra, played overture and incidental music in the style which Regent patrons have learnt to expect.