REGENT THEATRE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 30 October 1940, Page 2

REGENT THEATRE

‘I “YOUNG TOM EDISON.” After a long lapse of time another outstanding biographical film has been made which will be shown at the Re- | gent Theatre tonight and which should have a most successful season, for it J has everything which goes to the makI ing of a movie for these exacting I times. The film is “Young Tom Edison,” the first of two which Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer is making. “Young Tom” is portrayed by Mickey Rooney. “Young Tom Edison” shows the great inventor and scientist as he was when he went to school in a small country community. To these small town folk he was a “crack-pot,” his desire for knowledge was something not in the school books, his interest in doing things which had not been done was proof that he was crazy. And the restless inventive mind, the desire to find at first hand what happens when two chemicals are mixed, was just something which did not conform to the normal and thus was to be suppressed. So the film shows the adventures of young Tom, how he sets the school on fire and how he blows up another boy with gas, and later, when things seem to be going better’ for him, how he destroys all he has built up by discovering, all by himself, the “new” explosive of nitro-gly-cerine. There could not have been a harder boyhood, but it was a boyhood with many adventures and many laughs and the steady current of humour in the story wedded to the strong human interest and the really splendid acting of Mickey Rooney make this one of the best films of the year. There is an excellent cast, with George Bancroft and Fay Bainter as Edison’s father and mother, Virginia Weidler as his little sister, Eugene Pallette and Margaret Hamilton contributing their quota towards an excellent production. The featurettes are outstanding and 1 include a gorgeous all-colour Fitzpat- I rick Traveltalk of “New Orleans,” a i Metro Miniature, ' “Servant of Man- i kind,” and the latest Air Mail News, I Plans are at the shop of Messrs Steele I and Bull and the theatre. :