Cheerful Sandy Powell

Auckland Star, Volume LXX, Issue 99, 29 April 1939, Page 7 (Supplement)

Cheerful Sandy Powell

WHEN I was invited to the Beaconsfield Studios to meet Sandy Powell I was a little worried (writes an English film correspondent). So many comedians when off-screen lose the charm of their film personality. I needn't have bothered myself about Sandy. In private the rotund Laneashireman is the same kindly, friendly, soul seen in his. highly successful musical comedies on the screen—the same genial personality you will see once more shortly in "Song of Soho." X sat waiting for him in his dressingroom. The door swung open and' he oame in, plump and jocular. He smiled pleasantly and lifted his white bowler. "Pleased to meet you. lafl."' he greeted me. "Sit down, will you. Don't mind

me making up, do you? No, I can see you don't." I didn't find Sandy an ideal star to interview. He is not eager to talk about himself, nor full of his own importance. Sandy's job is to entertain, and he does it well. He has no patience with the West End. '"It doesn't mean a thing.*' he told me. "Give me the good old provinces. It's the provinces that spread the butter on ; your bread!" ♦ * ♦ * ' yiVIEX LEIGH who plays the part of ''Libby" in the Charles Laughton film, > "St. Martin's Lane," appears again with Rex' Harrison, who played opposite her ! in "Storm in a Teacup." "Libby" is a f tough, homeless, little Cockney girl, who gives an excellent burlesque of Charles ■ in a coffee-stall sequence. "St. Martin's' s Lane" was Mies Leigh's last English film L before going to Hollywood to play the prize -role of the entire talkie era, that I of Scarlett O'Hara in "Gone With the L Wind." :