NEW REGENT

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 730, 1 August 1929, Page 17

NEW REGENT

“BROADWAY MELODY” COMING

"The Studio Murder Paramount’s latest all-talking mystery film, continues to thrill the audiences at the New Regent Theatre, where it will be screend for two more days. Doris Hall, Fredric March and Neil Hamilton are the stars in this unusual tale of a double murder in the shadowy stages of a big motion picture studio. The all-talking features of this programme will also be presented only until Saturday.

Featuring all the liltirig laughter, daring dancers and mood-moving music of a regular New York revue, "The Broadway Melody," Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer’s all-talking, all-singing, alldancing production of backstage life, will be the big attraction at the Regent on Saturday. This is the sort of brilliant entertainment that one is accustomed to find in the theatre district of New York.

Anita Page and Bessie Love, its two leading ladies, appear as a kerosene circuit “sister .act" that comes from the “sticks" to show Broadway how to put on a show. Miss Page plays the role of the younger of the two sisters whose beauty takes her farther than the other’s cleverness. Miss Love is the business manager for the act, its chief star and the guardian of her little sister.

A humanly interesting love theme runs throughout in which Charles King appears as a smart-cracking song-and-dance man who promises to put the sisters across. However, after being put on for a tryout, at the request of their boy friend, who writes them special musical scores, the act fails.

A specially written theme song, “Broadway Melody," is heard throughout the production. It is augmented by several novelty numbers among them “The Wedding of the Painted Dolls,” “Love Boat” and others. These catchy songs create the musical background for the technicolour sequence in which a chorus of more than sixty specialty dancers appear in one of the most sensational dance creations ever attempted for the screen.

Harry Beaumont, responsible for the successful direction of “Our Dancing Daughters” and other outstanding classics of the screen, directed the huge production Others in the cast are Jed Prouty, Kenneth Thomson, Edward Dillon. Mary Doran. Eddie Kane, J. Emmett Beck, Marshall Ruth and Drew Demarest.

The box plans, which are filling rapidly, are on view at the theatre and at Lewis Eady, Limited.

Tulip time in Holland is graphicallv reproduced on the Dutch village set of “Christina,” in the Fox studio grounds, with permanent tulip beds. This is the first picture in which Janet Gaynor has the stellar role, and in which she is said to play a part more nearly like her real character than any in which she has yet appeared.