NEW REGENT

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 942, 8 April 1930, Page 15

NEW REGENT

"IT’S A GREAT LIFE” Because oL' their acknowledged success at putting over new songs and making them hits overnight, much interest is being shown in the new numbers which the Duncan Sisters will introduce in “It’s a Great Life,” (their first Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer alltalking, singing and dancing picture, filmed in technicolor, which comes to the New Begent Theatre today. Seven brand-new songs are warbled in the production by the two wellknown harmony blues singers. The songs were written specially for them by Ballard Macdonald and Dave Dreyer, a song - writing team of the highest reputation. Macdonald has done scores of big Bits, but “The Trail of the Lonesome Pine” alone would entitle him to immortality in the world of popular songs. Likewise Dreyer has received thousands of dollars in royalties from “Me and My Shadow” and ‘‘Rainbow ’Round My Shoulder.” “Following You” is a blues number of great It is “played with splendid feeling by the two stars. It is one of those numbers that will have everybody humming as they leave the Theatre. As a foil to it, “Tell Me. Dirty Maiden” is a very comical burlesque on the “Tell Me, Pretty Maiden,” of the Floradora Sextette, with clownish Rosetta attired in an over-size tuxedo, and .handle-bar whiskers. “Sailing on a Sunbeam” is another very lyrical number. Then comes another “for laughs [ only” selection, “It's an Old Spanish Custom,” where Rosetta, opines that the exceptionally florid love-making ol a certain Castilian gentleman must be just part of the manners of the country. “Smile, Smile, Smile, with Mandelbaum and Weil.” is the “rouse ’em lip” song of the department store foi which the girls work in the first sequences of the plot. Because Rosetta clowns this number she and her sistei get “canned,” and with Lawrence Gras ! form a vaudeville act. “The Hoosiei | Hop” is.something new in dance numr hers, and “Won’t You ,Be My Lads ; Love?” is a final lyrical blues number | put over as only the Duncans can. ! “It's a .Great Life” was directed bj : Sam Wood. Others in the cast in- : elude Benny Rubin, Dudles* Chambers ; Willie Marks, Jed Proutv, Georgi j Periolat, Oscar Apfel and George Davis The Regent’s new programme wii , include a number of shorter talkit I items. 1 Universal has purchased from the estate of Frank Desprez the talkin* ; picture rights to "Lasca.” This stor: I originall\’ published as a poem, ha: ; been used as a play, a moving picturt j and a novelette. Tom Reed, because ! of the tremendous success he made o i the adaptation of Peter B. Kyne’1 “Throe Godfathers,” has been assigpet *to 'La sea ”