ENTERTAINMENTS

Waikato Times, Volume 125, Issue 20912, 18 September 1939, Page 3

ENTERTAINMENTS

CURRENT PROGRAMMES REGENT THEATRE ‘‘■Huckleberry Finn” is a fine production, Mark Twain’s widelyread story having been brought to the screen very successfully. It tells how Huckleberry Finn, son of “Pap” Finn, a drunken sot, is cared for by the Widow Douglas and her sister. Miss Watson, who live in a small village on the Mississippi in the days before the Civil War. Jim, a slave owned by the widow, is a good friend of Ruck. Ruck plays hookey from school, smokes a pipe secretly, has liis own quaint philosophy. The lather of the boy, knowing that the widow loves Ruck, demands 800 dollars of her, threatening otherwise to take him away. Huck decides to run away, and after many sensational, humorous and romantic incidents the story works up to an exciting climax. STATE THEATRE “Racketeers of the Range” is a colourful story of the West, in which George U'Brien, famous lor iiis stalwart characterisations, lias an opportunity to display to the fullest his skill at roping, riding and lighting. The popular outdoor star is seen as a courageous rancher who single-hand-edly frustrates the efforts of an unscrupulous packing company to victimise a group of cattlemen. Fistfights, hard riding and last shooting are plentifully interpersed in the highspeed action. Marjorie Reynolds, Chill Wilts, Gay Seabrook, Frank Marvin, Ray Whitley and Robert Riske have "supporting roles. The plot of “Broadway Musketeers,” with Margaret Lindsay, John Litel and Dick Purcell heading the cast, starts with a reunion of three girls who were brought up together in an orphan asylum, and then it follows their strangely interwoven fortunes, which lead one to dishonour and death, and the other two to dearly won happiness. ROXY THEATRE The first great aviation picture ever to be filmed in Technicolour is the panoramic history of flight, “Men With NVings.” It traces the history of aviation from the dawn of the twentieth century, when the Wright Brothers made their never-to-be-forgotten flight, down to the present day of kixury airliners, round-the-world flights, super-bombers and transAtlantic transportation. Fred MaeMurray, Ray Milland and Louise Campbell are seen as the three modern pioneers who devote their lives to furthering man’s conquest of the skies. -Three Blind Mice.” with Loretta j Young and Joel McCrea in the

romantic leads, is a sparkling production. Scenes on a Kansas chicken life in a millionaire play-boy colony; pleasure sailing craft crashing at sea; gay fiesta scenes and three delightful love stories going on simultaneously form the principal highlights of the picture. THEATRE ROYAL As the title suggests John Howard, playing life clever “Drummond” in 'Bulldog Drummond's Secret Police,” forges his adventure-loving companions into a private detective force, when the discovery of fabulous buried treasure under his castle brings a desperate killer into their midst. The murder of an eminent scientist, who alone knows the location of the treasure and the theft of his secret code, brings about the postponement of "Drummond’s” oft-delayed wedding and a thrilling search through mysterious underground vaults. “Boy Trouble” tells of the laughs, joys and heart-breaks of modern family life, with Mary Boland and Charles Ruggles in the leads. CIVIC THEATRE “Tailspin” tells in thrilling fashion of the part that women play in the field of aviation. Alice Faye has the leading part as a girl who leaves a position in a night club in order to enter lor an air race for women, and gives a line portrayal ol' a woman who does not allow minor scruples to interfere with her great ambition. The drama does not go smoothly on, however, and the story traces tlie whole of the triumphs and tragedies of this dangerous profession before the climax is reached. The 111 m includes some of the most thrilling flying ever seen on the screen, with powerful racing planes, roaring, zooming and hurtling through space with danger on every turn, and courageous pilots, parachuting to safety from a plane, plunging, diving, crashing in flames. It is a screen story hy Frank Wead, the man who wrote “Hell’s Divers,” “Dirigible,” and “Ceiling Zero.”