“RIO RITA”

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 889, 5 February 1930, Page 14

“RIO RITA”

TALKING FILM VERSION COMING

The voice that is said to have been the talk of Hollywood this season, will be heard from the screen of both tho

Regent and Strand Theatres on February 14, when Bebe Daniels will be heard singing the songs of “Rio Rita,” the Florenz Ziegfeld musical extravaganza recently staged here, which opens on that date for an extended run. In all the revolu-*

tion and surprises talking pictures have brought to the film industry, nothing has created more of a sensation than the “discovery” of the remarkable singing voice said to be possessed by the erstwhile comedienne of the silent screen. At least the comments of those newspaper and movie folks who attend those things known as previews in Hollywood, all indicate that Bebe’s voice lives up to the rapturous and enthusiastic adjectives of the Radio Picture’s press department.

The cast which has transferred the stage hit to the sound screen is a large one and includes many favourites of both stage and screen. Bert "Wheeler and Robert Woolsey will be seen in the comedy roles they created in the stage version of “Rio Rita.” Dorothy Lee, the baby-talk comedienne of “Syncopation.” Helen Kaiser, one of Ziegfeld’s “glorified” girls, Georges Renavent, French stage star, Don Alvarado and Nick de Ruiz, former tenor of the Metropolitan Grand Opera Company, are others in the large featured cast. Much of the film was photographed in technicolour. The sets and costumes which dress this romantic operetta of the Rio Grande country are said to be among the most sumptuous yet revealed to the jaded eye of the tired moviegoer. Box plans will be open at both theatres from next Tuesday.