Indianapolis Times, Indianapolis, Marion County, 24 September 1937 — Page 30

PAGE 30

. THE

| Leontovich’s

Debut Here

Is Praised

Star Makes Play of Red ; And White Russians ~~ Good Humor.

: By JAMES THRASHER {That highly combustible delight and international hit, “Tovarich,” is with us at English’s to launch our dramatic season on a note of literate, mor. The play will remain tonight and for matinee and

evening performances tomor-

Yow. Besides the blessing of the witty play itself, ‘Tovarich” serves as a welcome if belated introduction of Eugenie Leontovich to Indianapolis. t also brings back McKay Morris,

ho, after two seasons of excellent , shows us again his excellence with the lighter touch. It takes an exceedingly adroit person to choose the lives and philcsophies of White and Red Russians, write a play around them, and make that play a succéss in a hak dozen countries. Jacques Deval has done that with “Tovarich,” because he looked into both their houses with sympathy and good humor. For it is the essential struggle of right and left, though with Mother Russia triumphant, that is seen in the lives of Prince Mitail Alexandrovitch Ouratieff and the Grand Duchess Tatiana Petrovna during the three months we know them. It is potentially strong stuff when the impoverished royal pair signs over to the Soviet commissar the four billion francs entrusted by the Tsar to Mikail, to be used “in his sovereign’s best interest.”

Play of People

But it is also the stuff for grand comedy, and therein the play triumphs, Especially when the couple, a on forged references from themselves, go to work as servants In the home of a wealthy French banker. Most especially when the banker’s son and daughter fall in love with Tatiana and Mikail, and the guests at the banker's international money-raising dinner party recognize the servants as royalty. When divergent ideas bubble almost to the boiling point, M. Deval has given the action a witty or ludicrous turn, and avoids a “message” in favor of light-hearted entertainment. For, really, I have been making “Tovarich” sound much too serious. It is not-a play of political philosophies, but of people. And the author's drawing of the volatile, emotional, loyal and slightly mad Russian couple is a triumph. Robert Sherwood, the English adapter, has retained all the play's sparkle, and Gilbert Miller's: staging and production defy quibbling. Raymond Sovey’s settings have fulfilled the idea of that branch of the theatric art in actually and swiftly setting the scenes’ atmosphere as well as delighting the eye.

Mr. Morris Perfect Foil

Devout thanks should be offered up that there is such a Russian as Miss Leontovich to play so delightful a creature as Tatiana Petrovna. An artist of infinite subtlety and grace and eloquence of gesture, her performance is of stunning and well-proportioned virtuosity. And in Mr. Morris she has a perfect foil —in the word’s best sense. His Mikail is a compendium of Russian exuberance, sentiment and delicious slyness. This “Tovarich” company (there are two on the road) is exceptionally well cast. A special word must go for Deval’'s Commissar Gorotchenko, and John Barclay’s playing

i N Gl | 5 : Tonight, Tomorrow : Night, 8:30 P. M. Matinee Tomorrow at 2:30 P. M.

LEGNTOVICH

TOVARIC

ou. Mc KAY MORRIS EVES: 73c, $1, $1.50, $2, $2.50 SAT, MAT.:50c, $1, $1.50, $2 PLUS TAX

INDIANAPOLIS TIMES _

“TOVARICH, WITTY COMEDY, LAUNCHES ENGLISH'S DRAMA. SEASON!

brilliant good hu-|.

CROSBY MOVIE GOES TO APOLLO

Books War Film

The Times-Universal uncen= sored newsreel of the SinoJapanese fighting in Shanghai is to be shown today through Sunday at the Granada Theater. Scenes include a street bombing, transportation of American refugees to the liner President McKinley, fires in Chapei, the native quarter, engagements between Chinese airplanes and Japanese warships, and landing of soldiers taken within the Japanese lines. The "Granada’s feature pictures on this program will be “Ever Since Eve,” with Robert Montgomery and Marion Davies, and “The League of Frightened Men,” with Walter Connolly. i

HER DESIGNS USED

Carole Lombard, who could have bee na designer if she’d wanted to, worked closely with Travis Banton in the outlining of the striking wardrobe which the star wears in “True Confession,” her current picture with Fred MacMurray.

of him. Though unmistakably the villian of the piece, the author seeks to confound us all by making him suave, subtle, sardonic and yet endowing him with a grateful understanding. These are qualities which generally are supposed to have been read out of the party years ago. The play is inclined to an overlong third-act coda, but beyond that it is of admirable construction. It is a savory blend of subtle digs and farce and serious moments. And in the end, when Mikail gives Gorotchenko the Tsar's fortune to save Russia’s oil fields from the foreigners; when the Commissar addresses the Grand Duchess as “Your imperial highness,” and she calls him “Tovarich—comrade’—well, it may be a bit of hokum, but we love it!

N. B.C. Orchestra

Featuring Lovely

GAILE REED ADMISSION 40°

EXTRA

Winner of This Week’s Bowes Radio Hour

‘FLORENCE IZOR

Indianapolis’ Own Amateur Xylophonist

PILUARMONICA OTS—7, iH ed Chari McCarthy : messin JONES

mateur Kate Smith

wi 1 DRED -MAYE EIGHT BIG APPLES GLADYS STEWART 3 “SOUTHERN - GENTLEMEN JIMMY EDMUNDSON

SID RAYMOND eo . BUDDY LEWIS ¢ HERBERT READE

Pll take MURDER! . Pll take MARRIAGE! Pll take A WALK!

PAT O'BRIEN

JOAN BLONDELL

MARGARET LINDSAY

A Warner Brothers Smile-a-Minute Hit! Ne

Crm

Here are the four principals of “Double or Nothing” which moved from the Circle to the Apollo to= day for a second week’s run. The backgammon play-

vine.

Vacation Plans Changed by War

Times Special HOLLYWOOD, Sept. 24—First Hollywood vacation ruined by the current China-Japan crisis is that of Cary Grant, who canceled reservations to sail to Tokyo this week. The star intended to go incognito and share passage with Mel Merrihue, his friend and stand-in, as soon as he completed “The Awful Truth” in which he costars opposite Irene Dunne, but changed his mind because of conditions in the Far East. Instead, he may go to the Bahamas or Rio de Janeiro, if time permits before he is needed for the romantic lead in Frances Marion's forthcoming = historical epic titled “The Pioneers.”

Local Girl Joins Lyric Stage Cast

Miss Florence Izor, 17-year-old xylophonist, daughter of Albert B. Izor, local druggist, arrived here by plane at 4 a. m. this morning to take part in the Major Bowes anniversary show on the Lyric stage. She appeared on the Bowes amateur hour in New York ‘last night. Miss Izor graduated from Shortridge last June, has been playing the xylophone for “three or four years,” her father said.

ers are the stars, Bing Crosby and Mary Carlisle; kibitzers are William Frawley (left) and Andy De-

WHAT, WHEN, WHERE

APOLLO

“Double or Nothing, Crosby and Metin a 3:43 6:58 and 10:18. “Flight From Ne with Chester Morris and Whitney Bourne, at 11:31; 2:41, 5:51 and 9:01.

CIRCLE - “Varsity Show,” with Dick Powell, Fred Waring, Rosemary and Priscilla Lane, at 11, 1:42, 4:24, 7:06 and 9:48.

ENGLISH’S

* with Bing aye, at 12:38,

“Tovarich” with Eugenie LeontoBich nd McRay Morris. Curtain at p.

KEITH'S Vaudeville, on stage, with Wendell

all. “The Hoosier Schoolboy,” on screen, with Mickey Rooney.

LOEW’S

“The Big City,” with Spencer

Tis acy and Luise Rainer, at 11

4:30, 7:15 and 1 “The. Girl Said % No, with Trene Hervey. Robert Armstrong and G bert and Sujlivan stars, at 12: iy 3:10. 5:55 and 8:4

Lacie

“Maj. Bowes’ Second Anniversar Radio Revue,” on stage, at 1:11, 3:50, 6:40 and 9:30. “Back in Circulation,” with Pat Opnen and Joan Biondefl, at 11:35, , 5:04, 7:54 and 1

OHIO

“The Glass Key,” Raft. Also “The evil wh Richard Dix.

AMBASSADOR

“Road Back,” with John King. Also, “Marry the Girl,” with Mary Boland. :

ALAMO

“Eas Living with Jean Arthur and dward Arnold. Also, ‘‘The Hooded Horseman’ with Tex Ritter.

with George Is Driving,”

BLUFFING

his way out of “hot” spots!

FIGHTING

it out with the racket mobs!

SPENCER

25¢ fo 6

Here is Drama

BIG in heart throbs, BIG in thrills, BIG in its { {human tender love story with two BIGTIME stars in the BIGGEST triumph of their careers!

INTRIGUING

as in "Great Ziegfeld"!

FASCINATING as she was in “Good Earth”!

TRACY .RAINER

In M-G-M:Drama Packed with Fury and T.N. T!

ADDED!

MUSICAL COMEDY

THE GIRL SAID NO

Robt. Armstrong ® Irene Hervey & Gilbert 5 Sullivan Players

- Exciting, Romantic, Comedy

PRESENTS

THEIR THIRD RECORDFOR BREAKING WEEK

REIS & DUNN

HELD OVER BY POPULAR REQUEST

With a New Revue Opening Tonight Featuring

JOANNE ANDREWS VIVACIOUS SONGSTRESS

TEXAS ROCKETS

8 BEAUTIFUL GIRLS

OEHMAN TWINS DASHING BALLROOM TEAM

BENNY STRONG

AND HIS SOUTHERNAIRES WITH JEANNE CARROLL

‘Collegiate’

Film Stress On Glamour

'Varsity Show' Hits Acme In Academic Finales.

College was never like this. Even the movie producers, who have demonstrated their ignorance of college life many times, know that nothing like Busby Berkeley’s spectacular finale to ‘Varsity Show,” opening today at the Circle, could ever happen on a col-

lege campus.

Each year’s college musical is grander thah its predecessors, and in “Varsity Show” the Warner Bros. have produced what is, until next year, the acme of academic glamour.

The cast includes Dick Powell, Fred Waring and his Pennsylvanians, Ted Healy, Walter Catlett, the Lane sisters, Johnny Davis, Poley McClintock and Buck and Bubbles.

Fred Waring is an insubordinate mathematics professor in a small Eastern college. He resents the control of the college Quadrangle Club show by Walter Catlett, whose ideas of musical comedy approximate the Vassar daisy chain and a Good Health Day combined.

' Sisters Take to Idea

So he puts into the pretty heads of the Lane sisters, Priscilla (brunet) and Rosemary (blond), students in his classes, the idea of having Dick Powell, an alumnus of the college, return to coach the show. Dick is a big-time Broadway producer, flat broke after a show failure. The students’ offer of $1000 to coach the show looks big to him and his assistant, Ted Healy. Ted also notices the Lane girls are goodlooking, but he falls prey to Mabel Todd, homeliest girl on the campus. Dick and Fred, of course, get the beautiful Lanes. Prof. Catlett lines up the faculty in his support and gets the show back from Dick Powell. The students strike to no avail. When they learn that their would-be benefactor is out of a job, they decide to take his show, in vacation time, to Broadway, to vindicate him in'the big time. It is there that Mr. Berkeley gets his opportunity for a climax very uncollegiate, very movie-like and very stupendous. The music, written by Dick Whiting and Johnny Mercer, is the kind you like to hum. You've already heard most of it on the air—“Have

GETS CHANCE

Good d Rating |

A ; A : Opportunity, unlike charity, doesn’t always begin at home. For instance, Geraldine Rudolph, born and brought up in New York, had to go to London for a screen chance. Dancing in a night club not far from Piccadilly, Miss Rudolph was seen by Alexander ‘Korda and signed for appearances in British films.

You Got Any Castles, Baby?” “Love Is on the Air Tonight,” and “Old King Cole.”

Powell still will be the ideal of Indianapolis maidens and some matrons. His song with Rosemary Lane in front of the Campus Owl especially is touching. The Lane sisters and the rest of the cast sing even better than the star. Fred Waring's music is good. The mumps scene between Mr. Healy and Mr. Catlett is supposed to put patrons in the aisle and likely will, because it is good comedy of the slapstick sort. (By S. H)

'TRUCKING' CHAMP Myrna Loy was taught how to “truck” by her colored maid, Theresa, and is now a “trucking” champion in the film colony.

GRANADA

10'5 Virginia Ave Tonite-Sat.-Sun.

MARION DAVIES MONTGOMERY nl —Extra Hit—

WALTER CONNELLEY LEAGUE OF FRIGHTENED MEN

Extra—Authentic Pictures Chino-Jap War. Stay away weak hearts—It’s first Indianapolis showing.

CARTOON

LEON ER: OMEDY!

PARAMOUNT and PATHE NEWS!

TODAY -e

IL IT'S THE “CLASS”

OF 1937 IN SCREEN MUSICALS!!

25c¢c UNTIL 6

elu RE IE

11 BS

N=

NE

STAR OF GILLETTE PROGRAM W

TOMORROp/ FRLANDALL Wick

LZ ez al THAT FAMOUY [1

N PERSON Nrabio

on LL WITH MILTON BERLE

"FEATURED ON WRIGLEY PiELiOG FH SHAMPOO |

EVER RE/SY AN

DMANY OTHER RADIO PROGRAM ‘NOW SEE HIM ON THE STAGE RAN Sac 3

|HOWARD

Tunes Bring

‘Girl Said No’

Gilbert, Sullivan Scores Are Heard in Loew's Attraction.

Though filmed with an improbable plot, “The Girl Said No,” now at Loew's, rates high above the usual weak sister of a double bill, thanks

to the inclusion of Gilbert and Sullivan’s music in the score.

Enough has been made of the fact that this music has never reached the screen before, and of the circumstances surrounding its music debut, that no added words are needed here. We can be thankful, though, that these operettas, which have delighted each new generation of theatergoers, have been brought to a larger audience. Two grand old veterans of Gilbert and Sullivan repertpry, William Danforth and ¥rank Moulan, are the film’s chief delights. Their voices may not have withstood time's ravages too well, but they are steeped in the rich Savoyard tradition, as anyone who has seen them in local appearances will testify. Also in the “cast within a cast” are Vivian Hart, who likewise has been seen here recently, Vera Ross and Allan Rogers. There is no stinting of Gilbert and Sullivan in the picture. We hear the

from “Ruddigore”; the famous “Poe liceman’s Song” from “The Pirates of Penzance”; “The Magnet and the Churn” from “Patience”; two “Pinafore” selections, “Poor Little But-

and six selections for the “Mikado” finale, including all the best-loved favorites. Leading up to this finale is the story of a gold-digging taxi dancer and a bookie. Pearl, the dancer (Irene Hervey), meets Jimmie, the bookie (Robert Armstrong), and “takes him for his roll,” as the quaint saying is. Jimmie had bet two cronies $1000 it couldn’t be done, and consequently he swears a large and dreadful oath of vengeance. Meanwhile, he must get the money

Pearl to invest $500 in dramatic training, an additional sum to be

within 60 days. Gets a Theater Through gambling connections, he secures a theater, and plans to stage a Gilbert and Sullivan revival, Messrs. Danforth, Moulan and the rest are seen as a disbanded troupe who sell their restaurant to help finance the show. Jimmie gets deeper in the deception, while Pearl, thanks to the dra-

ing young lady overnight. Of course they fall in love, despite their ens mity. At the end, just as an irate theater owner is about to stop the show, everything works out satisfactorily. A prominent producer wants to buy the show; the critics in the audience stand up and cheer, and it all ends in a burst of “Mie kado” music.— (By J. Q. TJ)

“THE DEVIL IS DRIVING”

RICHARD , DIX

trio, “It Really Doesn’t « Matter,”

tercup” and “Monarch of the Sea,”

to meet his bet. So he persuades .

paid if he puts her name in lights’

matic training, has become a charm=

FIC Ch

ot. HEN william Henry

APOLLO

[ALG iL AVX wp

IMLLLE y - Foy Holden * HLT

Porky's Supers ARON rvice Colur=Tout: Adve -Tour Adventure Movietone pvietone News

Tonight's Presentation at Your

Neighborhood Theaters

EAST SIDE

SOUTH iin

Pp pe aramoun Doris Nolan “AS GOOD AS M IED” Novelty—Serial—|

B } Jd O U iam pen Feature

“FIFYY Roane TO "TOWN" “SMOKE EF _RANGE™

Doors Open at 5:40 RIVOLI off “MARRY THE G . Pat O’Brien “SAN QUENTIN” 2442 E. Wash. St. TACOMA Double Feature “WHEN'S YOUR BIRTHDAY:

“THE THIRTEENTH CHAIR” 4020 New York

TUXEDO “asia

IDING ON AIR Warner NG QRLAVE SHIP”

IRVING 7 E. Wash. St

550 Double, Feature “RIDING ON AIRE. oo" “IT HAPPENED OUT REST EMERSON otane vente PARADIS Langford

“HIT A “WINGS OVER 1 OVER oN i»

6116 E. Wash. St GOLDEN Boubis fain “WE'RE ON THE JURY” Astaire-Rogers “TOP HAT”

HAMILTON ‘Beis feature Brian Denier. “BORN EE STRAND =i toaiiNush- |

1 Deitrich—Robt. Donat METCHT WitHOUT ARMOR” Robert oun BREAKFA AST"

Wash. St. Neigh-

0 W. Mich, 8 atts i gg Jean Muir . MAN COURAGE” “pRARormuAY COWBOY: ass Se Slam : iy Official Pictures Se) ir es “DODGE CITY TRAIL”

ARATOG. SOUTH SIDE

“FOUNTAIN SQUARE

. George O’Brien

a "1 ZARING

SANDERS Si “CRIMINALS OF THE AIR ha AVA LON Boable Features bad

“THE SOLDIER AND ’ Rex Lease “SILVER 7?

ORIENTAL ‘Bo

“BEHIND THE wy “AMATEUR % EATKES

LINCOLN 8. East st Lincoln”

“WA Y O

out > “MAKE WAY FOR TOMORROW

8. Meridian Dousle Sue

NORTH SIDE

42nd & College UPTOWN Duals Feasats «I PROMISE TO PAY” «CALIFORNIA STRAIGHT AHEAD. ST. CLAIR ouble Feature “SING WHILE YOUBE ABLE”.

TALBOTT Jifighumer,

Alr-Condiiionea Double Feature Marx ers

DAY A AE RACES” “ELEPHANT BO

REX

“ANGEL'S HOLIDAY” Boris Arlo “NIGHT KEY”

GARRICK ~~ Dosbie Feature

oy MIND THE HEADY, BION OWN’ RANGE

Ema

afiithe ee

ag orci Fie

Slane Sou own Decent © ___ DREAM Dome toms

RMAN COURAG XT _nerls atlot “NIGHT KEY"

RITZ flinols aud

a Stuart SLADY E 5 2 “ELEPHANT

lor BOY"

“BOOTS O DEST) ; “NEW V FACES OF Nar v Central at Double “MEET THE MISE" “SAN QUENTIN”

St. Clay & FL Wayne y

30th and Illinois

itt 2 A

CINEMA ‘Sf Foe

“NEW

. OR HI Dnt OO Ct oh RRR ARH

AE

SE say 5 FER

Koi