REGENT THEATRE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 13 January 1940, Page 2

REGENT THEATRE

“TARZAN FINDS A SON.” Thrills, drama and tender romance, told amid the jungles of Africa will be seen at the Regent Theatre tonight in “Tarzan Finds a Son,” in which Johnny Weissmuller and Maureen O'Sullivan are seen. A new character comes to the screen in the fourth of the stories based on the Edgar Rice Burroughs characters in a “Tarzan, Junior,” played by John Sheffield, amazing five-year-old athlete who played the boy in “On Borrowed Time” on the New York stage. The new story deals with the finding of a baby, only survivor of a plane wreck in the jungle. Tarzan and his mate raise the boy. A safari arrives searching for plane survivors because of a legacy in England, and the boy becomes the centre of a plot to conceal his claim. Tarzan refuses to surrender the boy in any event, and Jane tricks him, feeling that the boy should return for his birthright. This leads to capture of the party by savages. A wild ride of a chimpanzee cavalry mounted on elephants with Weissmuller at the head, routs the savages in a dramatic climax. The cavalry charge, rescue of the baby from a changing rhinoceros, amazing underwater swimming by Weissmuller and young Sheffield, and dramatic sequences in the jungle tree house are high points in the adventure romance. Star animal actors include Cheeta, the famous Tarzan chimpanzee, Queenie, Tarzan’s elephant friend, and Baby Bee, smallest baby elephant in the United States. The players include lan Hunter, Henry Stephenson, Frieda Inescort, Henry Wilcoxon, Laraine Day and Morton Lowry. Hundreds of “natives” appear in bizarre ceremonies and the sequence in the great torture hall into which the herd of elephants crashes. Authentic native chants in Swahili lend a bizarre charm to the fantastic rites of the voodoo worshippers. A splendid array of supporting featurettes complete the programme.