PLAZA

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 974, 17 May 1930, Page 15

PLAZA

“ONE HYSTERICAL NIGHT” Suppose you were perfectly sane—which, of course, you are—and you suddenly find that everyone thinks you are crazy—even the girl you love. That, in a nutshell—“nut” being a very good word in this case—is the highly intriguing situation of “One Hysterical Night,” the rollicking Universal all-talking comedy picture starring Reginald Denny, coming to the Plaza Theatre today. “One Hysterical Night” is “something different” in pictures that you've been waiting for, replete with new situations—a riot of laughter. It’s Denny’s picture in almost every sense of the word. He wrote the story and the dialogue, and plays the star role. Denny waited for years to produce this - hilarious picture with Universal.

Chartning Nora Lane plays opposite Denny in as sweet and appealing a romance as he has ever enacted. Others in the cast include E. J. Ratcliffe, Fritz Feld, Slim Summerville, Jules Cowles, Joyzelle, Walter Brennan, Henry Otto, Margaret Campbell, Peter Gawthorne, D. R. O. Harswell, Rolfe Sedan and Lloyd Whitlock. In the picture Denny is introduced at a fancy dress ball as a man who actually imagines he is Napoleon. Many other famous characters of history and fiction are represented at the ball —the Duke of Wellington, Robin Hood, William Tell, Paul Revere, Robinson Crusoe, Salome, Sherlock Holmes and others. They are told that Denny, as “Napoleon,” really is cuckoo. You can imagine what happens! Pretty Miss Lane is Denny’s “Josephine,” while he poses as “Napoleon.”

A rubbing table, upon which he climbs to be mauled and pounded by the muscular Jim, his trainer, is the chief item of furniture in George Bancroft’s dressing rooms in the Paramount studios.