FILM SIDELIGHTS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 18 August 1938, Page 5

FILM SIDELIGHTS

CHARLES LAUGHTON SINGS AND DANCES. Charles Laughton, the famous British star, sings and dances in his latest film “St. Martin’s Lane,” a Pom-mer-Laughton “Mayflower” production released by Action Pictures: Laughton will sing “Straw Hat in the Rain,” accompanied by Tyrone Guthrie on the mouth organ and Gus McNaughton on the mandolin. Other numbers in the film are “London Love Song” sung by Polly Ward and “Vivien Waltz” dedicated to Vivien Leigh. Laughton appears as a London street entertainer. The film, by the way, features four exceptional animal stars, Joey, Ann, Zack and Zippy. They are all pure white cats. Ann and Joey can both walk the tight-rope, Joey tap-dances alone, and the others can count and do simple arithmetic. Joey has another claim to fame —he has one green and one red eye. Two Napoleons. Two rival Napoleons rode with their troops bn adjoining film sets in Hollywood recently. ■ While Sergei Arabiloff, Russian character player, who appears in “The Firefly,” which comes to the Regent next month, and his troops rode across a drawbridge and made a triumphal entry into Bayonne, Southern France, Charles Boyer was playing the identical role on the next set opposite Greta Garbo in “Marie Walewska.” The difference was that Boyer’s Napoleon was retreating from Moscow, supposedly a year or two later.

“The Mikado” in Colour. ■ Now under production at Pinewood studios, England is “The Mikado" the first of the Gilbert and Sullivan comic operas to be brought to the screen. The film which is being directed by Victor Schertzinger (of “Qne Night of Love” fame) is being made in colour. No changes have been made in story or music. Featured in the production will be John Barclay, Constance Willis, Elizabeth Paynter,- Martyn Green, Gregory Stroud (who was in New Zealand a year or two ago) and Kenny Baker, young American tenor of stage and screen fame. If “The Mikado” is successful, six more of the operas will be filmed. Air Raid Precautions. With Gordon Harker and John Lodge as the stars, shooting has started on “Lightning Conductor,” a British Air Raid precautions film which Maurice Elvey is directing. The picture which presents Harker in the role of a London ’bus conductor who volunteers as a warden under the A.R.P. scheme, has been adapted from an original story by Evadne Price, who provided the Cockney character comedian with one of his best stage parts in “The Phantom Light.” John Lodge, the New York lawyer who gave up law to be Marlene Dietrich’s leading man in “The Scarlet Empress” and subsequently became a star in British films plays the “menace.”

“A Flying Ace.” Clark Gable is a “flying ace.” Because of his interest in aviation and the roles he has had in aviation pictures, the stai- has been honoured by one of the most select flying clubs in America. The “Flying Ace Club” is an organisation composed of flying .aces, past and present. Every great American aviator is on its list of members. Through David R. Guerrara, commander in chief of the aces, Gable learned that he was elected the first honorary member of the club, during the filming of “Test Pilot” a forthcoming Regent attraction. Marshall Lost His Job. / Herbert Marshall who plays the husband of Marlene Dietrich in Paramount's “Angel” which comes to the State Theatre tomorrow week, was never intended by his family to be an actor. He was trained for a conservative business career, but his complete indifference to trade cost him his job as clerk in a firm of accountants. The swing to theatrical work was accomplished at once with great success., A Friend in Need. Madeleine Carroll proved a friend in need to a group of Spanish children one morning during the filming of “Blockade” Walter Wagner’s romantic drama of war-torn Spain, which will be screened at the State Theatre shortly. The actress arrived at the studiobright and early and discovered that nine, of the forty “extra” children recruited from the poorer Spanish district of Los Angeles had come to work without breakfast. So she insisted upon taking them to a restaurant across the street and treating them to what was probably the most bounteous meal of their lives. Meanwhile the director, William Dicterie proceeded to the filming of a scene in which Miss Carroll did not appear.