MAJESTIC

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 1001, 18 June 1930, Page 17

MAJESTIC

‘‘SARAH AND SON” ON FRIDAY ‘ Hit the Deck," Radio's flashing pageant of song and dance, is now in its second last day at the Majestic Theatre. Adapted from the stage hit, it boasts a cast of 14 well-known plavers, with hundreds in support. Polly Walker and Jack Oaki© enact the leading roles. Miss Walker, known as the Cinderella of Broadway, is a former follies star, and Oakie is Hollywood’s newest comedian. His part in “Hit the Heck” seems to have been written especially for him. Roger Gray and Franker Woods have re-created roles they originated on the stage. Others in the cast include Harry Sweet, Ethel Clayton, "Wallace MacDonald, George Over, Xate Hatt, June Clyde, Hell Henderson, Charles Sullivan and Andy Clark. More than 200 negro and white singers and dancers contribute to the success of the picture. Excellent supports are also being shown. The voice which English dramatic critics acclaimed as the “Most perfect ever projected from a London talking screen” will be heard at the Majestic Theare on Friday, when the Paramount romance-drama, “Sarah and Son,” is shown here. Gilbert Emery is the possessor of the voice. He made a notable talk- | ing debut in “Behind That Curtain,” j and now he is appearing in one of the main supporting roles in “Sarah and Son.” Emery is cast as John Ashmore, the wealthy man, who, with his childless wife, adopts the infant son of Sarah Storm (played by Ruth Chatterton) after Sarah’s malicious husband steals the baby away from her in an hour of inebriate revenge. The story conncerns Sarah’s struggle upward from poverty and obscurity. Fired by the ambition to regain her young son she braves the buffeting of an unsympathetic world and at last achieves personal success. How she retrieves her son from the intriguing foster parents provides the stirring climax of the picture. Frederic March supports Miss Chatterton in the leading male role. Others in the cast or Fuller Mellish, jun., Boris Lloyd and Phillippe de Lacy. Marguerite Padula’s four-ootaved voice will be hitting on all sixes in Radio Pictures’ spectacular new musical show at present untitled, but derived from Guy Bolton’s stage play. ; “The Ramblers.” with musical settings by Harry Ruby and Bert Kalmar, j Marguerite is the dusky warbling Lav* t ini a in “Hit the Heck.”