Evening Star Newspaper, December 26, 1936, Page 9

AMUSEMENTS. Garbo’s “Camille” Takes Place With Best Roles Sereen’s Most Talented Tragedlenne Lifts Robert Taylor to Stature of Actor in Palace Film. BY JAY A fanned to new and splendid acreen's outstanding tragedienne. It film, “Camille,” which bears the stamp of M-G-M. Loew's Palace. “Camille” may not be Garbo's greatest portrayal. CARMODY. NOTHER of the past'’s most tragic and beautiful ladies assumes the form of Greta Grabo to relive her story of heartbreak before the motion picture camera. This time it is “Camille,” whose love is life by the superlative talents of the is accomplished in a lavishly dressed It opened yesterday at One is too close to it to judge. Yet one feels that perspective - will not pull it very far below that ranking. The story and the woman who interprets it were made for each other. If there are moments when this truth is less apparent than at others, it is not the fault of Sweden’s greatest gift to America. She always is on key, the poignant one which she plays so well and with so many varia- tions of inflection and mood. The picture itself is not always so -worthy of unqualified praise. There are times when it moves slowly, when one feels that some of its detail could have been discarded without loss to its es- sential theme of a love that was deep, glorious and doomed. * x x % IP ATTENTION flags at such times, there are many avenues of es- cape. One, for instance, is the change in Garbo's voice. The Scandinavian accent is gone, It is a clear voice now" with none of its musical quality lost in the process of change. Or, during those passages of less compelling at- tention, one can contemplate what has happened to Robert Taylor. Under the spell of Garbo he climbs to the stature of an actor in the role of Ar- mand. Not always does he seem ade- quate, but his failures do not occur at those crucial moments when he must match her fire with similar emotion, her grief with equivalent torment, and her ecstasy with his own. Taylor comes through his greatest sereen test with more than many sus- pected him of having in the way of talent. Whether he owes it to the inspiration of the woman with whom he plays, his next picture will tell. He was Garbo's personal choice for the role of Armand, the handsome youth who perceives the inner beauty ©f Camille where other men had found enly maddening attractiveness. She Rever lets him fall in those numerous sequences where the action of the story lies in their hands. * kX % lmo her own portrayal Garbo injects an art of expression per- in lhe interpretation of many similar roles—Anna Christie, Queen Christina, Anna Karenina and others. 3t is the glory of her “Camille” that @ives her opportunity to run the gamut of the emotions of ladies in Comics Aid Tibbett in ‘Rialto Film Treacher and Ratoff ~Score in “Under Your Spell.” AWRENCE TIBBETT'S new fim, “Under Your Spell” which opened yesterday at the Rialto, is a pleasantly enter- taining photoplay. But°not because of Mr. Tibbett, his voice or the story. It is entertaining because Mr, Gregory Ratoff and Mr. Arthur Treacher, a pair of Hollywood's better motion picture saviours, have been allotted generous portions of the script to handle in their own bright ways, Mr. Tibbett is a singer (in spite of the fact some casting director might say he isn't the type). Mr. Treacher is his valet and Mr. Ratoff is his manager, and they deftly manage to make up for any shortcomings of the film play. Making up for these short- comings is no mean task, either, when you consider the story. It presents Mr. Tibbett as this singer who wants to get away from it all, goes to New Mexico so there will be opportunity for Mexican songs and picturesque photography, is followed by what is known as a headstrong heiress (Wendy Barrie) who wants him to sing at her party, so she will have a better party than a deb she does not like, So they battle out in the West and Tibbett comes back to New York and they still battle and there is & court room scene where Mr. Tibbett wins his case by the singing to the Judge, and the girl by spanking her. Somebody will do the world & favor some time and make a film about a singer who stays out West and yodels to the hills and his valet. But there is Mr. Treacher and $here is Mr. Ratoff. Treacher has one of his fattest film roles to date and he butties all over the place, #ven turns cowhand-butler. He comes down off his high horse a couple of times, too, once to smack Mr. Ratoff in the eye and again to have & Bangover. Dialectician Ratoff also furns in some hilarious moments, es- pecially those scenes where he is bustling his singer from place to place, standing him in front of one love. She is everything from the country girl who can discourse on proper diet for cows to the courtesan | who can make monkeys out of Paris’ | most sophisticated males. Love is her | art and she is the complete mistress of its every subtle phase, & quality | that will make her current fiim no | Jess pleasing to women than to men. Alternately she digs gold (paper francs, to be exact) out of Paris' | most noble lover and lures bees to peaceful haven on the bucolic re- | treat to which she has retired with Armand. She is no less talented in one wile than the other. She appears in one of her most startling, if not her most happy mo- ments, when she is resoundingly slapped by the disappointed baron after he has just given her 40,000 francs to pay the debts that will free her to love Armand. %% 2 an perhaps, than any scene in “Anna Karenina,” as good, in- deed, as in the unforgettable inter- lude of the inn in “Queen Christina” is the sequence in which she agrees to renounce her love for Armand &t the behest of his father. At this moment & love that is without stain is made ugly by a remembered past. That part speaks not only in the tormented words, but the tor- tured expressions of a superlatively fine actress. To many it will be the highlight of the entire film, a se- quence in which Garbo shares hon- ors with Lionel Barrymore, Deflance of the happy ending tra- dition gives Garbo's Camille its most polgnant moment. It is in the death scene that both she and Taylor rise to their finest performances in the picture, playing it with a finesse that never permits it to get out of hand when it might so easily have done Just that. The supporting cast in the picture, which belongs s0 definitely to the enraptured lovers, is excellent. been dressed with the care and fidelity that mark all the pictures of Great Garbo. There are short subjects to com- plete the bill, but the feature makes them seem singularly unimportant, NoW 1 KEITH'S -t A wasnt; » imsriTeTIen BOBBY BREER 'RAIMBOUI = RIVER WAY ROBSON o 8 SUTTERWONTR . Coming .. LILY PONS THAT GIRL FROM PARIS sAex oamiz @ SEnE wAYMONS Masonic Auditorium 13th and New York Ave. Beginning Sun., December 8:30 P.M. ASTROLOGY FOR ALL Talks and Foreeasts by J. ROSS TYLER Seientific New York Astreloger. All Seats 50 Cts.. Ine. Tax GAYETY BURLESK STARTING SUNDAY MATINEE START THE NEW YEAR WITH FRANK X. SILK INDER, ELEANOR JOHNSON PATRICIA MORGAN Sp«ul Mndm'hl Shou NEW_YEARS EVE 27th, - IN IMONI %nuukuum CONNBC'HCUT YANKEES 17, PUNCH BOWL REVUE | 8 scresn: “siNNER TAKE ALy BB THE EVENING STAR, WASHINGTON, D. C, SATURDAY, DECEMBER 26, 1936. Clever Tale and Action Actress Welcomes Holiday Esther Muir, feminine foil for the Marz Brothers in their new picture, “A Day at the Races,” now in the making, welcomes the Christmas holiday from paperhanger’s paste Chico Marz has been throwing at her in recent scenes. The two are shown here engaged in turning out a bit of old-time slapstick comedy. TWINS FILL WISH 5-Year-0ld Girl Gets Doll and Baby Brother and Sister. CLEVELAND, December 26 (#).— = Five-year-old Louise Lucas scored a triple win on her Christmas wishes —Copyright, A. P. Wirephoto. yesterday. She wanted a doll or a baby brother or a baby sister to play with. The doll was waiting for her when she awakened. A baby brother and & baby sister were born to her mother, Mrs. Michols Lucas, in the after- oon. “Oh, boy, what a Christmas pres- ent,” beamed Louise. In 1937 “Golddiggers” Powell Songs, Blondell Contribution and Fine Comedy by Moore and Farrell Are Some Reasons for Picture’s Appeal. BY HARRY MacARTHUR. LL of those trim Warner Bros. “Golddiggers” who came to town a month or 80 ago in an airplane returned yesterday in four or five cans. The cans contain reels of celluloid, and the reels of celluloid, when projected in the proper sequence, expose to audiences at the Earle the latest in the “Golddiggers” musical series—"Golddiggers of 1937. “Golddiggers” is a blithe, airy and pleasant film, with & lot that enter- — tains. It has sprightly music, it has songs by Dick Powell, it has comedy by Victor Moore and Glenda Farrell, it has dances and it has (to coin a| “girls galore.” It has also| enough of a story to get it by as a light comedy, with the girls or the music or the dances. The yarn upon which the songs and | the merriment are hung, of course, is | one of those backstage tales. It hn to be or no one would recotnlle picture as one of the * Golddxnen" series. This time, however, the hero | of the piece does not step in at the | last moment, when the “star” sud- denly comes down with hoof-i mouth disease, and deliver a “socko” performance. No. This time he steps in at the last minute and produces the show when the producer collapses from the shock of learning he is stony broke, *x xx dialogue writers have done a noble job, though, and keep things moving at what is known as & merry clip. And the dialogue is aided no little by the fact that much of it is in hands (all right, mouths, if you're going to be technical) of Mr. Victor Moore and Miss Glenda Farrell. Mr. Moore is the apex beyond which there is no one as far as comedy goes. If you don't laugh when he merely walks onto the scene, you just can’t laugh, * % ¥ % AND never, probably, has Mr. Moore had 50 excellent & foil as Miss Farrell is in “Golddiggers.” Ever since she made the remark several years 8go that the guy she saw in the base- ment “made Frankenstein look like a sissy” Miss Farrell has been one of this department’s favorite fiim people. Now, in “Golddiggers,” she has one of the meatiest parts she's had in a long while, and she takes it right by the ears to deliver one of the best per- formances in the picture and one of the best she ever has done. Brothers Warner want to make a few hit comedies, all they have to do is ;put the writing boys to work on & | couple of yarns about a short, pudgy, lunny man and a girl who is hard and “soft” and bitter and happy at the same time. The Moore-Farrell team lhould be kept together, ks wm{ these two people around the rest of the performers in the picture sort of become lost in the rush. Even when they are Dick Powell and Joan Blondell, a pleasant enough pair of people to play the leads in any light romance; Lee Dixon, & dancer who is new to Hollywood, but who probably will stay; Osgood Per- kins, who does a fine bit of work as the associate of the progucer and the man who spent all the firm’s money; and Rosalind Marquis. The friends Rosa- lind made when she was here with that “Golddiggers” troupe will be happy to see that she seems destined for better things in films. The cam- eras pick up her smile with all its personality, she can sing and she knows how to handle comedy. The finale is where “Golddiggers” —— [BELASCOS: OPP.THE WHITE HOUSE Added Attraction ERA DE PARIS® fameus stars in seenes from sreat eperas. % BACK AGAIN-IN A BLAZE OF SWINGCOPATED MERRIMENT! The lid’s off and the party’s on—as Warner Bros. set the screen world singing, swing- ing and ringing with joy with a superlative new day edition of the classic “Gold Diggers" « « « Mirth and melody . . . Lyrics maids and and laughs 4 and lovely ladies . . . packed - with lavish profusion into a glorious show set to the split- second tempo by Warner Bros. with VICTOR MOORE GLENDA FARRELL LEE AMUSEMENTS. turns from comedy to musical and | where the golddiggers come in. Busby Berkeley has conceived a striking bit of entertainment in black and white | patterns with his horde of girls—and | he doesn't have a flower pattern In | the lot. It's excellent eye entertain- | ment. | = % GOLDDIGG!R&" is long enough. and lavish enough so that it really dosen't need an accompanying stage show, but there is one for a good measurs anyway. It's headlined by York and King, whose “Tintype Revue,” in which they impersonate | practically everybody who has any | claim to fame, was liked exceedingly by the customers yesterday. The custom- ers also approved of music as it is presented by Pianist Lee Sims and Guitarist-Singer Ilomay Bailey, who have been among the Earle's popu- lar stage acts before, and who are good. Also there's neat juggling by Bob Rips, who finally managed to catch that boat in Copenhagen, where he was stranded a few weeks ago, when he was supposed to be on Thirteenth street in Washington. —_——— Killed by Coconut. While walking along & road at Penang, Straits Bettlements, in a thunderstorm, Yap Ah Pang, a Chi- nese, was struck on the head by a coconut blown from & tree and was| killed. (Other theater news and reviews | on following page.) Warner Bros. Redecorated AVALON Coan. Ave. at McKiniey N. W. NOW OPEN SHIRLEY TEMPLE Tn 20 Contury Fox “Dimples” Patrons lavited To Come Larly Knd Taspect The Now Avalon NO ADVANCE IN PRICES ATIONAL Nites, 850 to_$2. Tod: MAE!'BGM & BtULA = SANVEL SPEWACK Next Week Bes. Mon. Seats Selling AAMERICAN PREMIERE off LONDON STAGE QUECESS BAMEYER Pressets @ merw drema by MARGUEAITE VEILLEN with a dictinguivhed cart includin, CLENA EARLE P MIRAMOYA-LARIMORE: Staged by JORN HAYDEN Geltings 1y G.E.CALTHROD Nites. 85¢ te 3235 Mats Wed. sod Sai. 88 u $2.20_(ine,_tex), &« BOSEPIA W ® SOWHITE % MIDNITE SHOW TONIGHT ASMIDNITE SHOW New Year's Fve, “QOboyoboy Heldon folks -. . here we go again!” MARTHA RAYE BOB BURNS' GIRL IN “"RHYTHM ON THE RANGE" & SIN G COMIC OF **BIG BROADCAST OF 1937 ‘HiDEaway Giny o APoromavet Firwre wib SHIRLEY ROSS o Wormer ROBERT CUMMINGS METRODOLITAN NEW YEAR'S EVE MIDNIGHT Headed by Glenda Farrell SHOW—DEC. 31st AT 11:30 P. M. in “SMART BLONDE" All Seats 40c ot r.rm-nl Photen! - Lawrence Philly ;N m-tre CAROLE lfilunlmn and March of Ti APOLLO Doors Oben, 12:30; Shay rs .n::u Awgn o ¥ AN muuna 3 MAGNIFICE UTE.” . Drummond, "T !R %’5 G“ L) et Lot S0 2105 _Pe: NW. Free Parkine, 2000 X 5. ILES. MARY BOLAND and MENJOU in “WIVES NEVER DUMBARTON Carrier Alr w&{l “c\? iter so_Comedy. ANACOSTIA, D. C. B1c CIRCLE SmASiEE FKWN. JUNE_TRAVIS in The Film Version of Charles Dickens' Shristmas ‘Carol » Also ANNA MAY WONG “CHU CHIN CHOW & WM. IOYD in HOP.‘;OIONG Silver Soring. Md. g Md. 'Y HOLIDAYS. Also TIM McCOY in "PIOH‘I'[ND PFOR .WSTICI" BLLISON Tand WARNER BROS. THEATERS ! i AVALON c-m. Av & McKiniey Show Start. 0 e L RN Theater noronlhly mflecorn -a ‘r‘:n:ouéh:‘urt. -ng Equipped ments for Yous Comfort, 0" imsrore: AVENUE GRAND WonAn Doors Open 11 Continuous and DORIS PH OF Nome AN & in “THE MANT MAREY ¥ STATE-I!ETHESI)A TR A wITHEM.'i‘ Mad. "CAN THIS BE DIXIE?” MICKEY in “THRU THE MIRROR.” Cartoon and News Events. Matinee, 2:00 P.M. Continuous. FALLS CHURCH. VA. STATE “*oiuiNc’ LEE ATUABT ERWIN JAGK l;_HLT in __ eamaBEN TAKOMA Kine T Danllmm\u anm I 00 P M. “MAGNIFICENT B BRUTE," “Holiywood Boulevard.” Op. COMU WIISON ARNER BAXTER "% iva JESSE THEATER l.‘l.u.. fl’" JOAN DIXON + OSGOOD PERKINS ROSALIND MARQUIS 170 NEW BEAUTY DISCOVERIES A First National Picture Directed by LLOYD BACON k-4 publicity camera after another and Fefusing to feed him, and in the court room sequence, where he quiets down after he finds out how much it costs fo talk. And for the Tibbett fans, there of eourse are songs. Tibbett sings “Under Your Spell” (any number of times), #Amigo” and “My Little Mule Wagon,” which were written for the film by Arthur Schwartz and Howard Dietz, and for a good measure he | throws in & powerful rendition of & “Faust” aria. —H. M. EEEETIPRYIIET. Lawrence Tibbett In a New Romantic Musical Comedy «Firat Washington Showing— Under Your Spell ‘I"A!‘l":'; A'lll Wlnur HEAR DICK SING— “With Plenty Of Money And You” “Speaking Of The Weather” 7 b “All’s Fair In Love And War” Ie “Let's Put Our Heads Together” H 2 By Harry Werren & Al Dubin, Harold Aren & E-Y. Horburg « Dance numbers concoived and directed by BUSBY BERKELEY Wernsr Bo= NEW YEAR'S EVE MIDNIGHT SHOW Thursday nite Last Complete Show Starts 11:30 P. M. No Advance in Prices a A HORSE. Sunday, December 27—8:15 P.M. ANK!&! chnl and .vom “The Changes” UNITED LODGE OF THEOSOPHISTS + Hill Bui 17th and Eye Sn. N.W. No dues, fees or collections, fl 00 PM. CHARLIE RUGG! B N " |HIPPODROME ' fant “Feature Avbrox. bids g wllxl;: Huuan Ruth Chlfinlz‘sn in TOMORROW, “DEVIL IS A SISSY.” MT. RAINIER. lgolu{:u n..u?!"- CAmEQ YORK & KING SIMS & BAILEY & other acts E AR L E row sHowine DANCING. | \Leroy H. Thayer | Fox-Trot—Tango—Walts—Rhumba Learn to ,ead well follow easily De. | veiop poise cp and confidence tn & | few lessons uest. lesson and | dance lnllylu—vn’."wut obligation. Studio open from 10 Me. 4121 m%s’in FeiBga VR Warner Bros. PALM THEATER ol “COME AND GET IT.” EDWaRD ARNOLD ‘0& McCREA. 1215 Connecticut Ave. Ma x'm. 8t 1100 P ml--