Roberta reviewed
Roberta (RKO). Dressed up with Jerome Kern songs, Alice Duer Miller's little anecdote about the U. S. football hero who, on a visit to Paris, inherits his aunt's dressmaking establishment and marries a Russian princess, was one of the hit shows of the 1933-34 theatrical season in Manhattan. Now, further decorated
and enlarged to suit the tastes of cinemaddicts, it has become a thoroughly enjoyable musicomedy of the smart rather than the spectacular type, which can be recommended to students of singing, dancing and next season's female fashions. The screen version of Roberta contains two new Kern songs—"I Won't Dance" and "Lovely to Look At"—in addition to "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes" and three others held over from the stage version. Roberta, a kindly, domineering, elderly cosmopolite, is Helen Westley. Her assistant, the Russian princess whose chief
function is to put her to sleep with sentimental lullabies
every afternoon, is Irene Dunne. Her unsophisticated nephew is Randolph Scott. These items, in addition to a series of handsome modernistic interiors and a fashion show which is likely to have a helpful influence on this summer's trends in dressmaking,
can be listed among the advantages of the picture. But the most
pleasant moments in Roberta arrive when Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers turn the story upside down and dance on it. On the three occasions when they allow their feet to speak for them, their sleek and nimble scufflings lift Roberta out of the class of ordinary entertainment, make it an intermittent masterpiece.
The picture establishes Fred Astaire more firmly than ever as the No. 1 hoofer of the cinema and proves what The Gay Divorcee suggested: that Ginger Rogers is a wholly acceptable partner.
It appeared in the March 18, 1935 issue of the magazine.
Premier Wang" (presumably of China) appeared on the cover. According to the story:
"A keen little Japanese general, trim if tubby, bustled about Hongkong last week, the confident swish of his great-coat followed by hate-glinting Chinese eyes. "
The story, which deals with Japan's efforts to annex parts of China, continues:Nanking has an ornate and splendid new "White House," but President Lin modestly resides in a rented house. The White House, he seems to feel, should be occupied by the Nanking Government's real boss, Generalissimo Chiang Kaishek. But the
Generalissimo's pose is precisely that he is not President. Last week the Chinese Communist armies, which the Government reports "almost exterminated" every few months, were again giving Generalissimo Chiang so much trouble that he placed himself at the head of forces rushing to avenge the murder of an Australian missionary. Left in command at Nanking was the versatile and brilliant Premier of China, Mr. Wang Ching-wei. Today he is carrying the awful onus of secret negotiations with Japan, fateful to China's whole future—the future of the most populous nation in the world.
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