DE LUXE THEATRE

Dominion, Volume 30, Issue 255, 24 July 1937, Page 16

DE LUXE THEATRE

* “Love Letters of a Star” and “Trouble in Morocco” Behind the title of Universal’s “Love Letters of a Star,” which is now showing at the De Luxe Theatre, there seems to lie an attempt to capitalise recent sensational American news stories about indiscreet letter-writing by stage and screen stars. But this actually has little to do with the story, which turns out to be an ordinary murder mystery developed along formal lines with a certain amount of suspense arising from the usual practice of throwing suspicion on every possible character. There are too many tangled skeins in the plot and the loose ends are not very neatly tied up at the end. but thanks to a couple of murders and some surprising twists the film should prove reasonably entertaining to those picturegoers who like their melodrama to he swift and eventful. When her love letters to a matinee idol fall into the hands of a blackmailer, the daughter of. a wealthy family commits suicide. The blackmailer then transfers his attentions to other members of the family, but is mysteriously murdered, and instead of calling in the police they try to hide the body in order to escape scandal. When the police do enter the case the husband of tile dead woman falls under suspicion. There is another murder, and many false scents are followed before the guilt is suddenly, and not too convincingly, pinned on the least obvious person. The acting is good, and it compensates considerably for weaknesses in the story, the leading roles being played by Henry Hunter, Polly Rowles, C. Henry Gordon, Hobart Cavanaugh and Ralph Forbes. Columbia’s “Trouble in Morocco,” the other feature, is another of those films about rival reporters (male and female), only this time there is very little romantic interest. Jack Holt’s virile type of acting is not suited to lovemaking, and very wisely he is not asked to indulge in it with Mac Clarke. They go to Morocco to get a “story” about gun-running to the natives, and Holt becomes an unwilling member of the Foreign Legion. But he succeeds in uncovering the smugglers and bringing help to a beleaguered garrison in true “Beau Geste” tradition.