KING’S THEATRE

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

KING’S THEATRE

* “Hollywood Cowboy” and “Behind the Headlines” How a star of Western pictures finds himself involved in the kind of range warfare that he has often portrayed on the screen is the theme of “Hollywood Cowboy,” an R.K.O. picture starring George O’Brien, which is now at the King's Theatre. City racketeers, deprived of their usual sources of revenue by a change of administration, decide to cash i.. on a strike among cowboys, and by engineering a series of outrages (which the ranch owners blame against the strikers) create a demand for the “protection” provided by the racketeers, for which the ranchers have to pay dearly. Into this explosive situation comes the Hollywood cowboy and a friend who have gone for a hunting trip together in the mountains. They join forces with a hardy old woman who has defied the racketeers and refused their offer of “protection,” and the hero falls in love witli her daughter (Cecilia Barker), Though the setting is modern there is as much hard riding and shooting as in any melodrama of the old Wild West. George O’Brien is putting on weight, but still remains one of the best portrayers of Western roles on the screen, and Cecilia Parker makes a decorative heroine. Good incidental comedy touches come from Maude Eburne and Joe Cnits, the latter being O’Brien's poet-ically-minded companion in adventure. Fast action is also the keynote of the second feature. '‘Behind the Headlines.” In this far-fetched but novel story, the excitement arises from encounters between gangsters and G-men. the efforts of the reporter hero (Lee I'racy) to secure exclusive nows, and the ruse by which the kidnapped heroine (Diana Gibson) uses ii shortwave transmitter to bring the police to her rescue. There is :i certain amount of mild comedy in the attempts of Die hero and heroine to "scoop” one another.