NEWSPAPER STORY AND BANDIT THRILLER

Press, Volume LXXVI, Issue 23004, 26 April 1940, Page 5

NEWSPAPER STORY AND BANDIT THRILLER

Double-Feature Programme For Plaza

Bonita Granville, in a newspaper, film, and Anna May Wong, in a prison thriller, are stars who appc r in the double-feature programme .booked for the Plaza next week. “Island of Lost Men” and "Nancy Drew—Reporter” are the two films. “Nancy Drew —Reporter” involves plenty of exciting incidents, with moments of real peril for the hproine, but also a saving overtone of humour which gives a warm and jolly flavour to the story. As the title of the picture promises, Nancy 'Drew works on a newspaper during this episode. When she and four high school classmates win a journalism contest sponsored by a local’paper and are given one-month jobs as reporters, she is handed an inconsequential assignment to cover a

poetry club luncheon, but instead she goes to a coroner’s inquest into the death of a rich old woman. A ward of the dead woman is held for murder, but Nancy is convinced she is innocent, and she gets her attorney father to defend the accused girl. She also has an idea as to who is guilty, and she and her boy friend, played by Frankie Thomas, trail two of their suspects to a Chinese restaurant, where they learn a lot by eavesdropping. They eventually capture the guilty persons. Prominent in the cast besides the four young players mentioned are John Litel, again as the father of Nancy Drew; Sheila Bromley, Larry Williams, Betty Amann, Thomas Jackson, and Olin Howland. The romance and mystery of the Orient and the intrigue identified with

the 'country north of Singapore serve' as a framework lor the Paramount drama “Island of Lost Men.” With Anna May Wong, J. Carrol Naish, Anthony Quinn, and Eric Blore cast in featured roles, the story relates how an Oriental girl goes in search of her father, a general who has vanished with £75,000 from the public treasury. She gets employment in a Straits Settlements seaport town, and there meets a Eurasian gun-runner and bandit. She slispects that he has abducted her father, because she notices, a medallion that has belonged- to her, father hanging from the outcast’s lapel. In spite of warnings, she goes with him to his lair up the river in an effort to save her father. The thrilling picture was directed by Kurt Neumann, and represents the first production effort of 'Eugene Zukor, son of Adolph Zukor, pioneer moviemaker. Warners are "trying to lure Helen Hayes back to films to co-star with Bette Davis in “All This and Heaven Too.” Much to the pride of Gene and Katherine Lockhart, incidentally, their 14-year-old daughter, June, makes her bow in the film in the excellent role of Charles Boyer’s daughter. « * . » Joan Crawford’s next film will be “Bombay Night.” ,