STRAND

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 743, 16 August 1929, Page 15

STRAND

“SHOW BOAT” “Show Boat” is a veritable film saga of river romanticism; the huge sternwheeled paddle-boats which made their way night after night to town after town and blew their calliope for the townsfolk to come down and see the shows and hear the songs which made their entertainment celebrated throughout the country; negro spirituals crooned in exquisite melody by darky minstrels; the twang of banjoes fingered by dusky hands. “Around the bend! Show boat! Show hpat!” A bustle of velveteen coats and Sunday skirts, then up the swaying gang-plank to an evening of delight. Into the lives of the Mississippi countryside the show boat came as their one eagerly awaited amusement —and into the life of Magnolia, the little show boat girl, came the picturesque gambler, Ravenal, the lover supreme and the gentleman superb. Love, and the vagaries of life that depended upon the turn of a card; the Chicago of the last generation, and—show boat again. All the romance, all the pathos, and all the picturesque scenes of the novel are literally brought to life in the £200,000 production which took seven months to make. To this has been added the dazzling movietoned high lights of the Ziegfeld production of “Show Boat,” taken bodily from the show at the Ziegfeld Theatre in New York. The same stars which appeared there, and the song hits they sang; a musical extravaganza unsurpassed in the history of the stage.. Besides Laura La Plante and Joseph Schildkraut, the cast of “Show Boat” features such notable players as Otis Harlan, Emily Fitzroy, Alma Rubens, Jack McDonald, Jane La Verne, Neely Edwards, Elise Bartlett and many others. Helen Morgan, Jules Bledsoe, Aunt Jemima and the famed Plantation Singers are the Ziegfeld contributions to the cast.

GRAND AND LYRIC “BEGGARS OF LIFE” “Beggars of Life,” the chief attraction at both the Grand and Lyric Theatres this evening is an unusual story from many angles. For one thing the tale concerns solely a little-known strata of society —tramps, or outcasts, or, as the Americans call them “Hobos.” Then again this story concerns the efforts of these rough men to protect from the police a young girl who murdered her employer—albeit under very extenuating circumstances. In the last scene, the girl and her new-found lover, a young tramp, escape the police through the help of a fellow tramp, and face life anew. The leading roles are ably portrayed by Louise Brooks, Richard Arlen and Wallace Beery. The second picture at both theatres is “The Woman From Luna,” a highly entertaining story in which the chief roles are taken by Mary Astor, Roy , D’Arcy and Robert Armstrong.