ENTERTAINMENTS

Waikato Times, Volume 127, Issue 21187, 9 August 1940, Page 2

ENTERTAINMENTS

TO-NIGHT’S PROGRAMMES

STATE THEATRE Hamilton has the honour of the New Zealand premiere of “Enemy Agent,” a thrilling story revealing the work of G-Men as they fight to halt spy activity and prevent theft of vital military plane designs from aircraft factories. For realism, suspense and fast action, few pictures have more to offer. The story is told in and around the giant aircraft factories of Southern California, and dramatizes newspaper stories on spy activities, and is charged with genuine excitement. Richard Cromwell gives one of his most convincing performances as the young plane draftsman who fights to clear himself of spy charges. Helen Vinson is excellent as the pretty secret service operative who lures the spies into a trap set for them by Robert Armstrong, who plays the G-Man assigned to the case. Phillip Dorn, noted Holland-Dutch actor, reveals exceptional talent as the brilliant spy-ring chief. How G-Men track down a nationwide syndicate engaged in the distribution of counterfeit sweepstakes tickets is graphically depicted in “Missing Evidence.”

ROXY THEATRE “Shipyard Sally,” with popular Gracie Fields at her best, and “In Old Monterey,” featuring Gene Autry, the singing cowboy, will be screened today. The great British shipyards at Clydebank, Scotland, are the setting for Gracie Field’s comedy film, “Shipyard Sally,” in which she is starred with Sydney Howard. These are the gigantic yards where the greatest trans-Atlantic liners of all time were built—the Queen Mary, the Queen Elizabeth, the new Aquitania and other famous ships. In fact, the film opens with the scene of Queen Elizabeth christening and launching the newest of the liners, named after herself. “In Old Monterey” deals with the confiscation of ranching lands for army purposes, and in addition exudes thrills, action, songs and romance. CIVIC THEATRE The war-whoops of Iroquois braves and the crash of muskets dominate “Drums Along the Mohawk,” which is filmed in technicolour. Claudette Colbert and Henry Fonda have the leading roles as a young couple in the little settlement in Mohawk Valley, in the days of the War of Independence, and the hardships of the pioneers laboriously carving homes for themselves out of the wilderness are vividly portrayed, particularly as they affected the womenfolk. During an Iroquois raid, the settlers watch, from the security of their fort, all the fruits of their labour destroyed, and hardly have they begun to repair the destruction when another Iroquois war party, in greater strength, swoops down on the settlement. Log cabins are again put to tlje flames, and those unhappy souls who fail to reach the fort are tomahawked and scalped. Round the fort itself a bitter fight rages, with the women standing shoulder to shoulder with their men against the Redskins. REGENT THEATRE

It has fallen to the lot of the one man in Hollywood who can do it to portray the role of the romantic Englishman of action in one of the most adventurous of pictures by one of the world’s greatest writers of the period when the British Empire was in its golden age. That is to say, Ronald Colman stars in Rudyard Kipling’s great action romance, “The Light That Failed.” It’s not because he is English himself—Hollywood has many English actors—that Colman is the ideal man to play the role of Dick Heldar, artist and soldier-of-fortune. It is, rather, because he has demonstrated in some of the best pictures of the type that he is the man for it. The supporting players in the production are Walter Huston, Ida Lupino, Muriel I Angelus and Dudley Digges, and they all do splendid work. As a novel “The Light That Failed” was a great success, and as a stage play it was an even greater hit. Now.it has been brought to the screen where it is sure to make a vivid impression. THEATRE ROYAL “Blondie on a Budget” is the newest and best of the richly human domestic comedies based upon Chic Young’s popular comic strip, with Penny Singleton and Arthur Lake again portraying Blondie and Dagwood. The film, in which Rita Hayworth is prominently cast, relates the hectic mis-adventures of the Bumsteads when an old former sweetheart returns to upset Dagwood and Blondie. Others in the cast are Larry Simms, as Baby Dumpling, Don Beddoe, Denny Mummert, and Thurston Hall. Virginia Bruce and Walter Pidgeon appear as a romantic team again in “Stronger Than Desire,” melodramatic romance of New York society. The story is a combination of happy married life, legal intrigue, a blackmail plot growing out of a flirtation, and a murder mystery with a photographic clue that provides something new in the unravelling of crime puzzles.