STRAND

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 1015, 4 July 1930, Page 17

STRAND

“HONKY TONK” Sophie Tucker, the perennial “redhot mamma” of the variety stage, is featured in "Honky Tonk,” Warner Brothers’ latest talking, singing Vitaphono production, which comes to the Strand Theatre today. Miss Tucker makes her motion picture debut in “Honky Tonk.” In this brilliant picture she is the centre of the riotous gaiety of the •Honky Tonk” night club in New York —the singer of rollicking songs in the “floor show,” and the bright particular star who is the principal attraction of the cabaret. And all the while she dreams of the daughter whom she is keeping at a fashionable school and in ignorance of her mother’s real life. Sophie sings a number of her most famous songs, as well as some that will be famous. She wears a succession of the gorgeous and glittering gowns for which'she is also famous—while the hectic night life of the Metropolis swirls dizzily about her, and the pleasure-buyers hail her with wild huzzas, clicking clackers and clapping hands. Sophie Tucker is truly in her element in “Honky Tonk,” but it is shown that her hidden but most engrossing interest is ’her grown daughter, who has been in a European school from childhood and does not know that her mother is anything less conventional than a sedate concert singer. There comes a day when the truth separates mother and daughter, and a not© of tragedy shrieks above the roar of jazz. Miss Tucker’s supporting cast in “Honky Tonk” includes George Duryea, Audrey Ferris, Mahlon Hamilton, Lila Leo and John T. Murray, and the production was directed by Lloyd Bacon, director of A 1 Jolson’s sensational success, “The Singing Fool.” A splendid programme of talkie featurettes is also to be presented. “The Return of Fu Manchu,” the all-talking sequel to the previous .Sax Rohmer production, has been completed. Warner Gland is featured in the title role, and O. P. Heggie in that of Detective Smith. The capable supporting cast is headed by Jean Arthur, Neil Hamilton, William Austin and David Dunbar.