CIVIC

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 1075, 12 September 1930, Page 15

CIVIC

“SO THIS IS LONDON” When. Fox Films selected George M. Cohan’s stage success, “So This Is London,” fur their second starring vehicle for Will Rogers, the best known comedy personality in America, they selected a story which not only was cut to lit the comedian, but a story that Rogers lias long wanted to do for the screen but awaited the audible screen for its proper presentment. Rogers, in the days that have gone had made several t ■ —| productions for the silent screen which were only fairly successful, mostly because the Rogers witticisms need the Rogers voice to get full play. His debut on the sound screen was in “They Had to See Paris,” which though a phenomenal success, was acclaimed by Rogers himself as ‘Must a rehearsal.'’ When letters began to pour in on him from all over the world complimenting him and begging him to do, another story, then and then only, did Rogers become convinced that the sound screen was his forte. In “,So This is London,” which the Civic Theatre will show today, Rogers plays the role of Hiram Draper, Texas cotton mill owner, whose business duties compel him to go to London to negotiate the purchase of a cotton mill. Then the fun begins. Draper’s idea is that all Englishmen are either butlers or lords —one drinking tea all day and the other serving it to him. Conversely, Lord Percy Worthing, played by Lumsden. Hare, classifies Americans as gum chewers and, in general, people who seem to bo able to talk of nothing but their money. Irene Rich plays again the role of Rogers’s screen wife, Maureen O’Sullivan is the English girl, Frank Albertson, the son of Rogers, and Lumsden Hare and Mary Forbes, the English parents of the girl. A capital supporting programme will also be presented this evening. At the cabled request of Rear-Ad-miral Richard E. Byrd, Mr. Thomas A. O’Brien entertained the Seamen's Mission at the Civic Theatre last evening at the screening of the film “With Byrd at the South Pole.” Russell Simpson is said to have broken all records for consecutive readings of the famous Biblical passage, the 23rd Psalm. Tn three days of King Vidor’s new picture, “Billy the Kid,” Simpson read this Psalm over two hundred times in rehearsals ar.d for the photographed scenes.