NEW REGENT

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 729, 31 July 1929, Page 17

NEW REGENT

“BROADWAY MELODY” ON SATURDAY

Richard HardelH who has won a chance in motion pictures through a magazine contest, is found murdered on a deserted stage of a mythical motion picture studio. Five people, the police learn, had ample motives and opportunities to commit the crime. Who killed him? That’s the setting of “The Studio Murder Mystery” at the New Regent. Was it Rupert Borka, who was directing Hardell in his first picture while knowing Hardell had flirted with his wife? Was it Mrs. Ilardell, the murdered man’s wife, who discovered him in a new love affair with the daughter of the studio watchman? Was it Helen MacDonald, the watchman’s daughter, who had hysterically threatened to make him suffer for his false promises of marriage? Was it Ted MacDonald, Helen’s brother, who was aware of his sister’s secret trysts with Hardell? Was it MacDonald, the watchman, Helen’s father, who also knew of his daughter’s dealings with Hardell? Police question these suspects. MacDonald admits he knows the guilty person but, before he can make his disclosures, ho dies, poisoned. His daughter, Helen, enmeshed by circumstantial evidence, is convicted of both crimes. She is sentenced to death. Then Tony White, studio gag man, in love with Helen, stumbles across an important clue. His sweetheart is snatched from the shadow pf the noose and replaced in the death cell by the real murderer ... “The Broadway Melody,” an elaborate production filmed by Metro-Gold-wyn-Mayer with all-talking, singing and dance effects, is the attraction which will be at the New Regent on Saturday. It is the most vividly portrayed drama of back stage life to reach the screen, with all the glamour, tinsel and clatter for which life behind the scenes is famous, reproduced in truthful and vivid manner. The story, an original by the celebrated playwright, Edmund Goulding, relates the sad yet humorous experience of a small town “sister act that looks like material for the Follies but flops In rehearsal. Through it all runs a humanly interesting romance, such as is carried on only in the averI age life of show people, whose chief I aim in living is to entertain the public for which they perform. The dramatic climax is a most heart-gripping episode, for after struggling to keep her “little sister from wandering off the straight and narrow, the good Samaritan sees true lovo take its course by sacrificing her own lover. Anita Page and Bessie Love appear as the “sister act,” and Charles King, musical comedy star, as the helpful song-and-danee-man lover.