KING’S THEATRE

Dominion, Volume 34, Issue 139, 8 March 1941, Page 15

KING’S THEATRE

Some of the earlier scenes in “Maryland,” now screening at the King’s Theatre, might have come straight from the walls of old English country homes. They are of the hunting field, and as the film is in colour—and excellent colour, at that —the scenes in question remind one instantly of a series of old sporting prints. The huntsman's pink coats, the black riding habits of the women, the brown and green of the landscape, and, above all, the sheen of the horses, go to make a picture which it will not be easy to forget. “Maryland” centres round Charlotte Dansfield, a woman in whom the love of horses and hunting is innate. Charlotte is passionately in love with her husband, and it is through a small subterfuge of hers that he meets his death on the hunting field. After this event she orders the mare to be shot, the stables are shut up, and she refuses to ride again or allow her young son to ride. To get him away from the atmosphere of the horseloving community in -which they live, she sends him abroad for his education, but this action is useless, for he returns, a full-grown man, with a love for horses. Another character that figures largely in the story is Uncle William (Walter Brennan), Charlotte’s trainer, till dismissal from her household, then trainer on his own account. He has a fine horse, Cavalier, which he desires to enter in the Maryland Hunt Club’s race meeting. He must find an amateur who is willing to ride, and it is when he has given up the search that young Dansfield comes on the scene. Lee Dansfield, who cannot understand his mother’s antipathy to horses, agrees to ride Cavalier, to the delight of Uncle William and his granddaughter Linda, but to the consternation and annoyance of his mother. In spite of Charlotte the race is run, and Cavalier is the winner. Charlotte is at first an unwilling witness, but the old love proving too strong for her, she joins with the crowd in “hallooing” her son .on toward the winning post. This film has an excellent cast, with Fay Bainter playing the sympathetic role of Mrs. Dansfield, John Payne as Lee, Brenda Joyce as Linda, Charles Ruggles as an oft’-inebriated uncle of the Dansfields, and some excellent coloured actors that include Hattie McDaniel. The scene in the church, -when the revival meeting converts “Shadrach” from a “low-account no good” to a man who sees the evils of his ways and ’insists on telling the truth, is a gem of its kind.