"THEY'RE COMING, SURE ENOUGH"

Radio Record, Volume XII, Issue 27, 16 December 1938, Page 6

"THEY'RE COMING, SURE ENOUGH"

Mr. Dean Confirms Booking Of Famous Stars for New Zealand and Australia SEVERAL weeks ago Ernest Rolls, co-managing director of Australian and New Zealand Theatres Ltd., passed through Auckland with news of a surprising galaxy of stage and screen stars he intended bringing out from America and England. Names he mentioned included Jeanette MacDonald, Nelson Eddy, Grace Moore, Annabella, Ketharine Hepburn. Famous-concert artists had also been booked, together with the cream of London and New York stage successes. The news was received with joy by theatre-goers, but unfortunately it was also greeted with a certain amount of scepticism in some quarters, beth in Australia and New Zealand.

URPRISE, however, that there should be any doubt at ail concerning the possibility of tours by these artists was expressed by George Dean, Mr. Rolls’s co-managing director, who recently returned to Australia by the Mariposa after a combined business and pleasure tour of England and America. "You have to remember," Mr. Bean told the "Record" at Auckland, "that some of Mr. Rolls’s arrangements were made well in advance. You can’t persuade an artist like Eddy to undertake a tour at a month’s notice, But they will be coming right enough, and to New Zealand as well. "While I was in America I myself completed arrangements with Lily Pons, and it won’t be long

before she is in Australia." it was the definite policy of his firm, Mr. Dean added, to tour New Zealand with every show that could possibly be brought across. \ith some shows, such as the ballet, which is now dcing sensational business in Australia, several difficulties had to be overcome. The ballet cost £3500 a week to produce, which meant that a lot of money had to be taken before any profit was shown at all. But, in spite of the difficulty of arranging prices which would be within the reach of the average theatre-goer, the ballet would be coming te New Zealand. Most interesting stage production Mr. Dean saw in America was "Night of Song," musical comedy

life story of Gilbert and Sullivan. It includes excerpts from several famous operas, but, on the whole, said Mr. Dean, it was disappointing. "You can’t swing Gilbert and

Sullivan. It’s almost as great a sacrilege as Maxine Sullivan swinging ‘Loch Lomond.’ " Plans are being seriously considered, Mr. Dean told the "Record," for the improvement of his firm’s theatres throughout New Zealand. "It looks as though something will just have to be done about that forest of posts in His Majesty’s at Auckland," he said. , | =