SIX OF TOP-NOTCH COMEDY STARS APPEAR IN “EVER SINCE EVE.”

Wairarapa Times-Age, 28 July 1938, Page 11

SIX OF TOP-NOTCH COMEDY STARS APPEAR IN “EVER SINCE EVE.”

Somewhere in the cast of nearly every picture ever filmed there’s a comedian. It's a film formula. Stars come and go, but good comedians maintain their popularity year after year. As long as they are willing and able to work, Hollywood has a place for them. Prominent among the comedy players who are in constant demand at the studios are Frank ■ McHugh, Louise Fazenda, Allen Jenkins and Patsy Kelly. Each of them has carried the humour of dozens of pictures. A genius for light comedy elevated Marion Davies to top-ranking stardom, a position which she maintains with. ease. And then there’s Robert Montgomery, whose flair for comedv has won him an enviable position "as a film star whose services are

always in demand. All of these funmakers —and more — are included in the cast of “Ever Since Eve,” the Warner Bros. Cosmopolitan production ivhich comes to the Regent Theatre on Saturday. Instead of one comedian, this delightful farce has Marion Davies and Robert Montgomery in starring roles, and Frank McHugh, Louise Fazenda, Patsy Kelly and Allen Jenkins supporting them. A versatile actress who can play a dramatic role as* well as a farcical one —Miss Davies has found that the public clamours for her as a comedienne. So, despite the fact that she would enjoy playing an intensely dramatic part, she sticks to the saucy, light roles which have won her top starring honours. Off the screen. Robert Montgomery is a very serious person. For that reason he feels pretty strongly about some of the ridiculous things he has to do on the screen . Here are just a few of the things he’s been forced by script requirements to publicly submit to: Getting sprayed by a hose, giving a baby its bottle, making love to a statue.

Smith Ballew and Lou Gehrig, costars of "Rawhide,” 20th Century-Fox release, coming on Tuesday to the State Theatre, have one thing in common. Ballew makes records while Gehrig breaks ’em. The singing cowboy, who started his career as a singer and orchestra leader, has made more than five thousand phonograph recordings. Lou Gehrig, on the other hand, holds more baseball records than any other player in the history of the game—a list numbering more than 16. The story of “Rawhide” is of the blazing action type, deftly interwoven with catchy music and colourful romance. In it Ballew and Gehrig team to wipe out the toughest band of cattle racketeers ever known to the - West. Feminine lead in the film is played by Evalyn Knapp with others in the cast including Arthur Loft and Si Jenks.

Adventure and excitement are the keynotes of “Flight Into Nowhere,” Jack Holt’s latest Columbia drama, which opens tomorrow at the Cosy Theatre. The film, enacted by a sterling cast, is set against the trackless forests of the upper Amazon, with modern science pitted against jungle voodoo. Holt is at his best in a two-fisted, fighting role, that of superintendent of a trans-continental air line who heads an expedition into the South American voids to rescue one of his pilots. Most of the action involves Holt and his flying team-mate, played by James Burke, of vaudeville fame. Burke is ideally cast as the flippant, bragging pilot, while Dick Purcell, making his debut under the Columbia banner, makes a sterling juvenile foil. Jacqueline Wells is the beautiful love interest opposite Purcell.

A thunderstorm starts off the outlandish goings-on in “Midnight Intruder,” the film opening at the Cosy Theatre tomorrow, wherein the destiny of a penniless adventurer is turned inside out, and in rapid succession he becomes an impostor, a detective, a lover and a writer. In this rollicking Universal comedy-mystery Louis Hayward, as a well-bred vagabond, breaks into a mansion to evade a storm. His hiding place is discovered by servants and the fun begins when the butler says to him: “Welcome home, sir.” Hayward poses as the mansion owner’s son, and gets away with it —until he meets the wife of the man he is impersonating! He falls in love with Barbara Read, but complications arise when he suspects her father of being a murderer.