REGINALD DENNY AGAIN

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 683, 7 June 1929, Page 14

REGINALD DENNY AGAIN

TIVOLI AND EVERYBODY’S ALSO "‘LOVE AND THE DEVIL” “The Night Bird,” which opened at the Tivoli and Everybody’s Theatres yesterday, is the most hilarious Reginald Benny comedy seen yet—and that is saying a lot about this favourite comedian’s newest production, when one remembers "Good Morning, Judge,” and a few others. This is an entirely new story. It is about a prizefighter and his private life, and how his manager insists that he indulge in a few night excursions so that the public will like him better and go to see him fight. Betsy Lee, a new discovery, has the feminine lead and plays it with the grace of a veteran. She is very beautiful. In fact there are three beautiful girls in the cast, as well as hundreds of the pick of Hollywood’s atmosphere players. The other two girls are Corliss Palmer and Jocelyn Lee. They add much to the general air of hilarity. Sam Hardy and Harvey Clark put many more gay “kicks” in the picture. The photoplay is a fast moving story of the prize-ring and New York’s night life, treated in the usual gay Benny manner. Behind the scenes in a Venetian opera house represents a phase of European life that is distinctly different from the New York boxing world. Such scenes form an interesting feature of “Love and the Devil,” in which Milton Sills and Maria Corda have the principal roles, which was the second attraction last evening. The quaint and typically foreign incidents, with the host of artists—coryphees, the premiere danseuse, and others—render these episodes in the picture decidedly striking. Romance of the first water is present in this dramatic story of an English nobleman’s love for an Italian diva. An interesting sequence is where Sills, as the nobleman, searches for the singer with whose picture he has fallen in love. He traces her movements from place to place—follows her gradual rise to stardom in the opera and finally meets her in the opera. There are the usual interesting supports, in all making up a fine programme. At the Tivoli Theatre, Miss M. Anderson’s orchestra played for the overture, “A Bay in Naples,” and the following incidental music: “La Traviata” (Verdi), “Serenata Napoletana” (Sgambati), “Canzonetta” (Pirani) “Barcarolle” (Tschaikowsky), “Symphony in E Minor” (Dvoraek), “From Italy” (Langey), “Mandoline” (Bebussy), “Rondo Capriccioso” (SaintSaens\ and “Overture Italienne” (Franceschi).