REGENT THEATRE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 29 December 1939, Page 2

REGENT THEATRE

“LUCKY NIGHT.” The final screening of this gay comedy, featuring Robert Taylor and Myrna Loy takes place at 7.45 o'clock this evening. “THE WIZARD OF OZ.” A city of great green bubbles which serve as houses, a forest of flexible trees which reach out with their branches as though they were human arms, and fantastic fields with giant flowers which move like humans, are among the fantastic scenes which taxed the ingenuity of skilled Hollywood technicians and are among the settings in “The Wizard of Oz,” filmisation of the L. Frank Baum fantasy, which comes to the Regent Theatre tonight at a special gala session at 10 o’clock. One of the most elaborate sets represents the Emerald City, home of the fabled wizard in the picture. It represents great hollow emeralds amid tall emerald spires. A glass-like compound was worked out by studio chemists. coloured emerald green, and under the play of lighting effects presented dazzling and iridescent surfaces for the technicolour in which the picture was made. The almost-human trees which grasp at Judy Garland, Ray Bolger, Jack Haley and Bert Lahr are marvels of ingenuity. Constructed of rubber, each of fifty trees in the central group was governed by twelve separate wire controls operated by technicians offstage. One of the baffling mechanical problems was that of the “flying monkeys,” large enough to pick up principals and fly with them. Men in fantastically coloured monkey suits played the monkeys. The giant flowers appear in the Land of the Munchkins, played by midgets in colourful make-up. The midgets emerge from the flowers in opening sequences. To take full advantage of colour photography, all costumes were in brilliant and contrasting hues in fantastic design. The settings are also fantastic in their tints. In the cast are Judy Gar- ; land, Frank Morgan, Ray Bolger, Bert ; Lahr, Jack Haley, Billie Burke, Mar- ' garet Hamilton, Charley Grapewin, Pat Walshe, Clara Blandick, a little clog named Toto and ten thousand of the , amazing people of Oz. The famous . story of little Dorothy, the farm girl . who is blown away by a cyclone and ( finds fantastic adventure in the Land ] of Oz. remains intact in the screen i version. A brilliant musical score with i six lilting songs by E. Y. Harburg and Harold Arlen accompanies the action of the picture, with colourful dance ensembles and chorus numbers. Superb featurettes complete the presentation which in all respects is the greatest in the history of the Regent Theatre. It is essential to reserve.