ROMANCE AND EXCITEMENT

Press, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22336, 25 February 1938, Page 7

ROMANCE AND EXCITEMENT

Ingredients of “The Prisoner of

Zenda” at Avon

Lavishly mounted, with more than 60 breath-taking sets, including a cathedral, a castle, and the sumptuous castle ballroom, designed by Lyle Wheeler, “The Prisoner of Zenda,” now at the Avon, offers some of the most impressive and beautiful scenes ever filmed, notably the coronation ceremony, and the coronation ball. John L. Balderston and Wells Root combined to make an excellent screen play, based on Edward Rose’s dramatisation of the Anthony Hope novel, and all the members of the imposing cast turn in uniformly fine performances under the expert direction of John Cromwell. The "excellent costumes were designed *by Ernst Dryden, and the splendid photography is credited to James Wong Howe. As the author who wrote a perfect motion picture story a long time before the motion picture was a commercial reality, Anthony Hope Hawkins, who wrote under the name of Anthoniy Hope, would possess one sound claim to distinction were he lacking any other. This is the belief of John Cromwell, who directed Hope’s most famous work, which was “The Prisoner of Zenda.” Ronald Colman, Madeleine Carroll, and Douglas Fairbanks, jun., head.-

ing the cast, do justice to the merits of the original scenario. Selznick’s opinion of the scenario reads as follows: “When ‘Zenda’ was written, at the turn of the century, motion pictures were indeed in their infancy, so Hope could hardly be 'accused of writing with one eye on Hollywood, which then was nothing but a cattle range with a few scattered fruit groves. “A critical analysis of his story today reveals, however, that it has every element required for a successful pic- , ture, while its transference to the screen is simply a matter of conforming its details to camera technique. For screen purposes, it could not have been written any better if Hope had been raised on a motion picture lot and had written the story directly for the films.

“The story is crammed with action, presented in smooth continuity, and building to a smashing climax. It has suspense, great romance, spectacle, comedy, and an ingenious plot. What director could 35k for more?” Hope was a British novelist, the second son of a London clergyman. He was educated at Marlborough and Balliol College, Oxford University, where ho was president of the Union Society, and soon after graduation began contributing stories and sketches to the “St. James Gazette.”