"TWO ARABIAN KNIGHTS."

Press, Volume LXIV, Issue 19217, 25 January 1928, Page 5

"TWO ARABIAN KNIGHTS."

WILLIAM BOYD & MARY ASTOR IN COMEDY DE LL'XE. "Two Arabian Knights," which is to be tho attraction at the Grand Theatre next week, is the most delightful comedy ever brought to the screen in war guise. United Artists present this picture, which boasts Mary Astor as feminine lead, and William Boyd, lan Keith, and a new star from Europe, Louis Wolheim, as leaders of the cast. Wolheim plays first sergeant in the play, and has a face like an army mule, a sense of humour as ponderous and incongruous as a rhino, and a conceit as tall as Everest. He must have been the original of that immortal remark, "There ain't no such animal." William Boyd is perfectly cast as the private who, with the mule man, escapes from a prison camp in Germany, not knowing that the war is over, boards a Greek tramp steamer, and arrives at Jaffa. Not alone do they arrive at Jaffa. A veiled and mysterious daughter of the Prophet has intrigued our two warriors, and Boyd, as Private W. Dangerfleld Phelps, makes great headway with her in the sign language; Sergeant McGaffney, being Sergeant McGaffney, continues being the army sergeant in her presence, complete with language and all, i|ad he takes the count when, on disembarking, the daughter of Islam addresses him in fluent English. It is as virile and hard-boiled, in its militant comedy, as "What Price Glory"; when it is learned that Wolheim was the original Captain Flagg of the stage version, one can understand his complete mastery of McGaffney in "Two Arabian Knights. The story is a subtle and hilarious quip on the One Thousand and One Nights—clever, witty, delicious. It is filled with adventure in the Orient, with furious pashas, sheiks, and emirs after the heroes; with salaams and kow-tows, with fair maidens and angry papas (papas are the same the whole world over; it must be a marriageable daughter that makes the whole world kin); with love, and laughs, and genuine romance. .The war iB left out, and the laughs are left'in, and, as a result, it is a thoroughly beautiful comedy. The box plans open to-morrow morning at The Bristol Piano Company, and it will be necessary to book scats.