MAJESTIC

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 889, 5 February 1930, Page 15

MAJESTIC

“WHY LEAVE HOME” With each new talking picture that makes its appearance the film industry proves it is advancing in giant strides. The latest microphonic recorded achievement of Fox Movietone to delight local fans is “Why Leave Home?” the first musical comedy to reach the speaking screen, and now at the Majestic Theatre. Bubbling with a never-ending stream of delightful humour, and containing a haunting group of song numbers that proved irresistible. “Why Leave Home?” is one of the most entertaining all-talking, singing and dancing pictures this reviewer has yet encountered. It is an adaptation of the well-known stage success, “Cradle Snatchers,” and is even funnier in the screen version than it was in the footlight production. Walter Catlett repeats his stage success, sharing the leading honours with Sue Carol and Nick Stuart. Incl dently, Catlett wrote the amusing dialogue. Notable performances are given by the other celebrities in the cast, David Rollins, Richard Keene Dixie Lee, Jean Bary, Jed Prouty, Ilka Chase and Dot Farley doing specially good work. In “The Girl From Havana,” Fox production directed by Benjamin Sto loff, which is coming on Friday, Pau’ Page, after a chase that alternates between Havana, Los Angeles and way stations and mostly aboard ship, finally, with the help of a girl detective, played by Lola Lane, tracks, down a group of society crooks mixed up in the theft of jewels. Through an inadvertent remark, ho learns that one “Spike Howard.” played by Warren Hymer, is the crook who has shot down his father. With this denouement one expects action and plenty of it and the picture justifies this expectation. Natalie Moorhead. Kenneth Thomson and Adele Windsor are prominent in the cast.

The use of a veritable forest of microphones fo,r the reproduction of orchestra numbers for talking films will shortly give way to the employing of a single “mike” and the proper grouping of orchestras, according to Albert de Sart, sound engineer for Paramount.