OIL DRAMA OF CHINA.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVI, Issue 223, 20 September 1935, Page 3

OIL DRAMA OF CHINA.

NEW FILM FOR MAJESTIC. Heralded as a stirring human document,! the film version of Alice Tisdale Hobart's best-selling novel, "Oil For the Lamps of China," is to be presented in Auckland for the first time at the Majestic Theatre to-day. The tale is a colourful recital of the life of American pioneers in China, wild! fought flood, fire and famine, as well as pestilence and banditry, to carry on for the American firms whose business they carried. Mrs. Hobart spent years in China, as the wife of an American business man, and got her information at first hand. The scenes for the most part are laid in the Orient, including the enowswept plains of Manchuria, Peking, Shanghai and the interior. Pat O'Brien has the leading role, that of an American fired with enthusiasm to make good with his company, a great oil concern, and to bring light to China by the way of lamps and oil. Josephine Hutchinson portrays the girl Pat marries, and who. in the end, saves him from being cast aside by the company in whose service he had spent a lifetime of work. Jean Muir and John Eldredge play the roles of friends of Pat and Miss Hutchinson. who, failing to understand Chinese methods, are broken on the wheel of adversity.