Page 14 - CinemaRecord Edition 3-2003 #41

Cartwheel ceiling lights, balconette
windows and lighting in the rear
draught-board of the stalls; all
typical of a Ballantyne Regent.
Image: Trevor Skelton; Alexander
Turnbull Library, Wellington.

The Christmas stage attraction for
1928 was Schistl’s Wonderettes, ‘300
little people in the most fascinating and
absorbing performance ever seen on
stage. The vaudeville find of the
decade’, if you can believe the
advertising.
On 4 April 1929 the prelude to the
double bill - Our Dancing Daughters
with Joan Crawford and Midnight
Madness with Clive Brook - was
‘Gautier’s Amazing Dog Bricklayers,
Canine Wonders of the Stage’. Sea lions,
diving nymphs, little people, and now
dogs, the Regent stage had them all.
After working through some
technical difficulties, the Regent went
over to sound on 18 April 1929. The
film was MGM’s The Bellamy Trial,
starring Leatrice Joy and Betty
Bronson, advertised as a Southern
Hemisphere Premiere. (The same film
would introduce sound to the Regent
Wellington on 29 May 1929 and to the
Regent Dunedin on 5 June 1929). It
was the first synchronised sound and
dialogue picture presented in Auckland.
Only a part-talkie, with Western
Electric sound-on-disc, the dialogue
was confined to a courtroom sequence.

14 2009 CINEMARECORD