For sheer magnificence, Hollywood has rarely produced anything that can compare with "The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex," the current attraction at the University Theatre. The costuming is brilliant, the sets impressive and seemingly authentic and the technicolor, which has been so cousistenly bad in the past, achieves a new and more than welcome reality. As is to be expected however, the personal triumph of Bette Davis as the ruthless but passion-torn Elizabeth is the high point of the picture. For this is the type of gutty part which other actresses shun, but in which Miss Davis seems to revel. But her dashing Essex, Errol Flynn, moons through his scenes like a self-conscious school boy. And as if this were not enough of an indignity, the adapters of the play have handed her a script which has been completely stripped of its poetic beauty. It seems a pity that the screen did not have the daring to use Mr. Anderson's blank verse which was so effective when the play ran on Broadway a few years ago. This was almost a fine picture rather than merely a good one, but it muffled its opportunity.

The second feature "stars" the Dead Fnd Kids. They and Mickey Rooney have made audiences despair of American youth for a number of years new. Rooney redeemed himself in his last picture, "Babes in Arms." In "On Dress Parade" however, the Kids are even more gorge raising than usual.