“NO, NO, NANETTE”

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 1000, 17 June 1930, Page 15

“NO, NO, NANETTE”

COMING TO THE ST. JAMES Bernice Claire and Alexander Gray play the featured roles in “No, No, Nanette,” the First National musical comedy picture coming to the St. James Theatre on Friday. Both these youngsters are comparative newcomers to the screen, Miss Claire portraying her first picture role, and Gray his second. Gray’s first screen role was opposite Marilyn Miller in “Sally,” another big First National musical production. Last season Gray sang in the Chicago stage company of “The Desert Song” with Miss Claire. ITe is a graduate of Penn State College. His first theatrical engagement was in the Midnight Frolic on the New Amsterdam roof in New York, after which he sang in the Follies. Miss Claire has sung in a number of! popular stage musical comedies. She was a protegee of Madame Jeritza, world-famous operatic star. Both players photograph excellently in technicolour, with which process the picture was partly filmed. Both are finished dancers. “No, No, Nanette” was directed by Clarence Badger. Larry Ceballos staged the dance ensembles. The cast includes Lucien Littlefield, Louise Fazenda, Lilyan Tashman, Bert Roach, Zasu Pitts, Mildred Harris, Henry Stockbridge, Jocelyn Lee, and others. EMPRESS, NEWTON Ever since dancing Joan Crawford first appeared on the screen the demand has been that she be given heavily dramatic, modern roles to do. “Untamed,” adapted from C. E. Scoggins’s “Saturday Evening Post” story, is her latest, now drawing crowds to the Empress Theatre. Incidentally it is Joan Crawford’s first all-talkie—a great treat for all movie-lovers. She plays a beautiful, enticing girl, brought up in the Central American jungles, suddenly brought face to face | w r ith the complexities of modern life. I Leaving Central America upon the | death of her father, she comes to New I York, and falls in love with a penniI less engineer.