REGENT THEATRE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 1 December 1941, Page 8

REGENT THEATRE

“WATERLOO BRIDGE.” Vivien Leigh, who portrayed Scarlett O’Hara in “Gone With The Wind,” plays another exacting role in Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer’s stirring love drama, “Waterloo Bridge,” which is to be shown tonight at the Regent Theatre. Robert E. Sherwood’s noted stage play has been drastically altered in its adaptation to the screen by S. N. Behrman and two collaborators. By setting the opening scene in London of the present day under the blackout conditions, the screen version is given added realism and vitality. Robert Taylor, who played opposite the little-known Miss Leigh three years ago in “A Yank at Oxford,” has ample scope for his youthful enthusiasm. He appears as an English officer who meets a young dancer on Waterloo 1 Bridge during a 1917 air raid. They fall in love simultaneously, and there follows a lightning courtship, which ends by the officer leaving for the front unexpectedly before they are married. For associating with the officer the girl is dismissed by the mistress of the ballet school, who is a stern disciplinarian. She is unable to find other work, and believing that her fiancee has been killed, succumbs to a life of degradation. Notable performances are given by Virginia Field as a dancer friend, Lucile Watson, as the aristocratic mother of the officer, and C. Aubrey Smith as his regimental commander.