Saturday,
HONGKONG TELEGRAPH.
April 27, 1940,
Alhaury, Supreme Court
MAGAZINE PAGE
ENTERTAINMENTS
LOVE IS BLIND
FILM: "THE LIGHT THAT
FAILED."
STARS, Ronald Colman, Ida Lupino, Muriel Angelus.
VERDICT: Grim, but very very
good.
THIS is a harrowing
business.
Kipling's story of the artist who went blind is one of the. Immeasurably great stories, like the true story of Beet- hoven; and if Dick Heldar had been greater artist and this had been a greater film I should have found it unendur- able.
It is unbearable enough as it stands, treated with a sort of deli- ente reminiscence which binds up the rugged ends of the wound.
The story? You know it. It moves inexorably and with many skilful nudges.
The Reilng
throughout.
is very beautiful
Ronald Colman Is admirably masculine as the man who lives by his eyes and dies without them.
Ida Lupino is immensely sugges- tive as the angry model who de- faces the only good pleture he ever painted, too late to cause pain,
The best man in the picture is Walter Huston, who plays the part of Dick's friend Torpenhow, the war correspondent with the knob- bly knees, with a hairy kindness and a gruff Victorianism which are very sweet.
-
FILM: "SHERLOCK HOLMES.“ STARS: Basil Rathbone, Nipel
Bruce, fila Lupino. VERDICT: Elementary, my dear
Watson.
MR. BASIL
RATHBONE plays Sherlock Holmes with a seriousness which not even the famous deerstalker cap, can quite equate with the genuine article.
Holmes played the fiddle and lived in Baker-street and wore 21 dressing-gown and smoked a pipe...
In the nim these things, become the affectations of vanished period.
EL
The relles of that familiar Lon- don, which
Holmes made the stories strike so near honie, have become stylisel.
The streets are littered with urns and statuary, and the Lon-
town don garden of the
house where Professor Moriarty, arranges for Ida Lupino to be stalked by a South American gaucho with Josso and false elub-feet reeks rather of the South American
Jungle than Bayswater.
The Holmes stories are dated, and that it is this emphasis on the "perlod" atmosphere whileh dates them.
a
I liked this flim enormously.
FILM: · "HOLLYWOOD CAVAL-
CADE."
STARS:
Alice Fave, Dou Ameche, Buster Keaton, Rin-Tin- Tin.
VERDICT: Happy days.
THE most amusing feature
of this potted history of Hollywood is the reconstruc- tion of an old-time custard-pic. bathing-belle, comic-policeman comic, acted all over again after goodness knows how many years by the same old people.
the
There's the chop with squint, the policeman with the British belmet and the low- necked dress, there's even the famous Tin Lizzie that dashes be- tween a couple of trams and comics aut squashed.
Happy days, happy days. Alice Faye secures her reputn- Hou of being the best sort in slapstick.
FILM: "A" OHUMP AT OX-
FORD."
of
STARS: Laurel and Hardy, VERDICT: Shados Arbuckle,
Fatty
WHAT'S ON
TO-DAY
KING'S: "My Little Chickadee" MAJESTIC:
QUEEN'S
"Hollywood Caval-
cadei
AND ALHAMBRA: "The Light That Failed" ORIENTAL: "A Chiamp at Or- Jord"
'TO-MORROW
KING'S: "Adventures of Sherlock
HolmesTM
QUEEN'S AND ALHAMBRAI “The Light That Failed"
ORIENTAL: "Hell's Kitchen" MAJESTIC: "Hollywood Caval-
cade"
probably
royal-blooded
young hero in Vaughan Wilkins'e "And So Victoria,**
Recently all those fine plans Wero scrapped when, in Call- fornia, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer pald Paramount the sum of 125,- dollars (£25,000) for the
rights -Fereen
of Robert Luuls Stevenson's "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde," which Fredric March pinyed in 1931.
For Donal. For June. Personally, I don't intich care what they moke, so long as they get along with it.
her original role of Mahbubah, in the lavish revival of the musical play with the record run of 2,239 performances.
"I'm the only member of Oscar Asche's cust in the new show," sho said recently.
"We wanted Sarah, die donkey,
• but at the age of 20 she is now at work in "The Silver Patrol' at the New.
"What a happy family we all were. Somebody or other had a birthday party nearly every day, for there were 180 of us.
"It years
was quité a little village. with births, marriages and deaths.
Milestone: After twelve hard, Warner Baxter has given up his starring contract with Twen- tieth Century Fox. He says, in future, he'll do no more than one Alma year.
I can understand it. He's been a star longer than Garbo, right back in the "Squaw Man" and "Daddy-Long-Legs" days. Last year, his carnings were returned At £70,000 odd.
Robert Montgomery has rented, furnished, the Manor House, Stoke Poges. It is early Elizabethán, hus
a banqueting hal with gnilery. Over the replace in the dining room is painted crest said to have been done by Charles 1, him- self.
I hope the beds are comfortable. Frank Capra and Robert Riskin are hard at work writing a screen Life of Shakespenre. They're out to make what you might call a rill WHL
*
"CHU Chin Chow" is re- hearsing in the West End.
Miss Sydney Fairbrother, the veteran comedy actress, is playing
"I shall never forget one of the camels falling down a grating out- side His Majesty's,
of
"Oscar Asche poured two bottics
liquer brandy down its neck while waiting for the humane killer from the Zoo.
"And the audiences! They re- turned again and again. Only yesterday I met a woman who saw it 77 timer.
"Schoolboys saw it in 1910, mar- ried and become daddies by 1921 -and still turned up."
A massive, bellowing figure, full of energy is 72-year-old Lyn Harding,
title now playing the roic.
On the vocal side are Marjorie Brown, Dennis Noble, Tom Kinni burgh and Kay Bourne, with Jerry Verno in the Courtice Pounds port and Rosalinde Fuller ns Zahrat.
Robert Atkins la producing. With a cast of 10 and orchestra of 40, it will be the biggest show en the road. opening at Glasgow and going to London later.
FAMOUS BRITISH REGIMENTS
The
ROYAL
S GOT S
parlourmaid were quite SCOTLAND has provided the Bri-
and a obviously comle.,
When the little one tylis was ordered to "serve the saind. un- dressed" appeared in a corset and pyjamas, one was evidently ex- pected to laugh. One did.
When the pale ate a banana on a_doorstep_and..so..caught a gang-- ster who slipped on the skin, and were given a free Oxford education by the bank manager as a reward, this was clearly deliberate,
un
It was when the 11-assorted couple turned
in Oxford dressed in Eton collars and were accused by the "boys" of "snitch- Ing and were only saved from the "Initiation ceremony" by their "valley" that I began to wonder. I laughed like anything, but still wonder.
FILMI: "HELL'S KITCHEN."
STARS: The Dead End Kids,
Margaret Lindsay. VERDICT: Popular subject,
"HELL'S KITCHEN" was a private reformatory for boys.
Of course, there was a terrible chap who ran it by sticking the chaps in the refrigerator when they were naughty.
This made him unpopular with the boys, and aroused the maternal feelings of the pretty young secre- fary.
I won't tell you any more of this story.
The fact is this is a marvellous film, beautifully acted by the young thugs, and well worth look- ing at--not too closely.
THE future screen carcer of Mr. Robert Donat is a sub- ject which frequently occupies this column. Probably for these two reasons:-
Donat, after reaching the end of a year's holiday from the screen, goes to work again June 1. And no valuable is he as 3 screen "property" (particularly since he won an Oscar) that his sponsors just can't make up their minds what they'd like to see him do,
To date, six different stories have been bought for him or 'con- aldered. It' has been announced 4 that he is to be Beau Brummel. To be Robert Schumann (with Mrs. Chips Greer Garson as Clara Schumann and Robert Taylor as Brahms). To be Frank Capra's Chopin: To be a young Jarrow shipyard worker In "The Ruined City." To be the nameless but
MY difficulty, as an alumnus of this particular Academy, was to discover which of the funny bits were unintentional.
I take it that the two street cleaners who got a job as a butler
tish Army with many famous regiments, and their records will ever be enshrined in Britain's mili- tary story.
Of these Scottish regiments, one of the oldest is the Royal Scots, with a history- that dates back more than three cen- turies.
This regiment was formed on January 26, 1033, and it had us its first commander Sir John Hep- burn, then known as "one of the Christendom," nest soldiers in
As in the case of many other re-
the giments, however,
present title of Royal Scots was not best- owed until many years after its formation.
Sir John Hepburn is famous for the fact that, after he was killed at the siege of Sevene, in 1936, a magnificent memorial to his honour was erected in the Cathedral of Toul by order of Louis XIV of France.
The seniority of the regiment officially dates from 1061 when, after the Restoration of Charles II to the Monarchy, Its members re- turned to England. The regiment went once more to France in 1600 but, in 1879, it came back to Eng- Jund under the command of George Douglas, Earl of Dumbarton and the defender of Treves.
It was then known as "Dumbur- ton's Regiment" and that comman- der's memory is preserved to-day fn the regimental tune-"Dumbar- ton's Drums."
THE Utle of Royal Scots was bestowed on the regiment for the Arst time in 1812, but nine years later the older title of the Royal Regiment was revived. It was nat until 1871 that the title of Royal Scots was finally granted as the regiment's permanent nume.
There
ore few British regiments a more imposing record of with a service. In all, the Royal Scots have taken part in 230 battles and sleges, and 35 battalions of the re- klment served in the Great War.
Early In the Seven Years' War of 17530-03, both battalions of the re- giment were sent to
to Amerien,
and they were later to travel to almost every part of the British Colonial empire. The Royal Scots were in Conada after the fall of Quebec, in West Indica, in Portugal, in the Ifolland and in Egypt. They also distinguished themselves by amar ing steadiness and gallantry at Waterloo,
Thele battle honours include "Tangler, 1880"—"Nomur, 1605”— Blenheim-Corunna-Alma-Inker- man-Sevastopol "Pelin, -"South Africa, 1899-1902"--and In the Great War they were h
1000"
By D. J.
MURPHY
uction at the Marne, 1015 and '19, Ypres 1015, 17, and '18, Loos, the
1034 Somme,
anel 1018-Arroa
1017 and 18, and Gallipoli, 10:1 16.
*
*
*
THE motto of this proud regi- ment is that famous Latin phrase "Nemo me impune incessit" (No one touches me with impunity) and It fully reflects the fighting qualities of the men who have Kerved under the Colours of the Royal Scots down the many years of the regiment's history,
The uniform is a scarlet doublet, with blue cloth facings, and tartan trews (trousers) and pantaloons.
Onc of the most remarkable how- facts about this regiment,
It ever, is its unique nickname.
known throughout the British Army as "Pontius Pilate's Body- guard,"
" and there is à real alice of history in the origin of this,
Many years ago, when the Royal Scots were serving on the Can- tinent, men of the regiment came French into contact with unlis of regiment and an argument aven- tually developed as to the antiquity of the respective forces.
When the Royal Scola claimed that their regiment was by far, the older, the French retorted by claiming to have been on guard of the Crucifixion. That did not dismay the Scots. Their retort WAS:
men
"Well, if we had been on guard then we would not have slept at our posts. We could not have been there, however, because that night-
The First Royal Regiment of Foot-1838
we were acting us Pontius Pilate's bodyguard.'
It has been claimed for the Royal Scots that no regiment can equal Their fighting record, and whether this is correct or not, there is no doubt that they have earned for themselves an imperishable niche
In
the long story of Britain's growth as a world Power.
The title of Royal Scots is, In itself, a guarantee of the regiment's prowess in the field of battle and of its steadfast devotion in every duly to which it has been called.
INANITY FARE
The Minister for Mines Doclines
To be called magnotic:
He says the Idos's pathetic,
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