STATE THEATRE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 9 March 1940, Page 2

STATE THEATRE

“THE FLYING DEUCES.” Laurel and Hardy, Hollywood’s most prolific and popular comedy team, return to the screen in “The Flying Deuces,” their first feature-length comedy in two years. They will be seen at the State Theatre tonight. This time the veteran comics have taken to the airways as a background for their misadventures, a thrilling and hilarious climax being provided in the final sequence, when the boys, as. two Foreign Legionaires sentenced to die for desertion, take flight in an endurance ship. The colourful background of Morocco and the Legion provides a natural and dramatic setting for pageantry and tomfoolery. Comedy highlights follow in rapid succession throughout the picture. There is the hilarious sequence where Stan encounters difficulty in performing his ablutions at a French inn’s washstand. Later, planning of a double suicide is equally amusing. • Audiences will be delighted to see how the pair withstand the assault of a squadron of soldiers with bottled champagne, and how they attack the problem of doing a regimental washing and ironing. For good measure, Laurel has thrown in a harp solo played on a bed spring, and an eccentric dance done to the singing of Oliver. The supporting cast to Laurel and Hardy includes Jean Parker, leading lady, in the featured role of a French girl with whom Oliver Hardy falls in love; Reginald Gardiner, also featured, as his suspicious lieutenant husband; Charles Middleton as the Commandant of the Moroccan post of the Foreign Legion; Jean Del Vai and Clen Wilenchick as Sergeant and Corporal respectively; James Finlayson as a gaoler, and many others, the cast being a large one. Flying thrills in the airplane stunts are provided by Frank Clarke, one of the veteran stunt fliers. Laurel and Hardy rank as the oldest comedy duo on the screen. They are now playing their thirteenth feature picture together, and have also appeared together in more than sixty shorts, being the most prolific, as well as the most successful of the film comedy duos.