NEW REGENT

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 914, 6 March 1930, Page 19

NEW REGENT

“THE HOLLYWOOD REVUE” A new era in motion picture entertainment, in the entire field of entertainment in fact, dawned in a blaze of glory at the New Regent Theatre, when “The Hollywood Revue,” Metro - Goldwyn-Mayer’s stupendous cinematic combination of the variety, musical comedy, and revue stages, was presented to an entranced and delighted audience. This is a motion picture that has equal proportions of eye and ear entertainment, and it is the first motion picture to be absolutely devoid of plot, yet thoroughly interesting and exciting from the first reel to the last. It has no plot, because it is a series of skits, songs, dances, and chatter —just a melange of the sort of stuff out of which the high-priced “Follies,” “Scandals.’’■'•“Vanities,” and “Passing Shows” of the Broadway theatres are built. Almost 30 stars of stage and screen appear in its acts. Almost a score of new songs and melodies are introduced, each one of them bound to be hummed and whistled tliroughoLit the land. It boasts some startling scenic and screen effects, many of them in colour, and many bizarre photographic innovations that delight and a.stound. Its ensembles and choruses would bankrupt the ordinary musical show. Its tempo of dance, song, and comedy is fast, furious, and breath-taking. Altogether, it is an entertainment that comes seldom in a lifetime, and lives long in the memory. ’

Such stars at Marion Davies, John Gilbert, Joan Crawford, Bessie Love, Norma Shearer, Buster Keaton, Charles King, Marie Dressier, Natacha Nattova, Anita Page, Polly Moran, Laurel and Hardy, Karl Dane, George K. Arthur, the Albertina Raseh Ballet, Cliff (Ukulele Ike), Edwards, Lionel Barrymore, the Rounders, Gus Et - wards, Conrad Nagel, Jack Benny, and others too numerous to mention, all take their turns, singing their own songs and dancing their own steps. It is hard to know* which to single out for special praise. Filming of “Sarah and Son,” Paramount’s picturisation of Timothy Shea’s famous novel, starring Ruth Chatterton, has just been completed at the Hollywood studios. Fredric March is cast in the male lead.