ST. JAMES THEATRE

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

ST. JAMES THEATRE

Wallace Beery never does a bad job whatever sort of film he is in. But his “fans” who take him seriously’ will always like him best in Westerns,, hardboiled, bulky, with his guns blazing in the cause of righteousness—even when he is cast as the villain. He is back in his very own element this week in “Wyoming,” which is being shown at the St. James Theatre. Supported by a good cast he nevertheless dominates the show with his rich deep voice, his elephantine but somehow graceful gestures, quicker on the draw than all the bad men who are nothing but bad. Reb Harkness (Wallace Beery) has fough on both sides in the American Civil War, ’so there’d be no hard feelin’s on either side,” he says. And after two years of war he has got out of the settled way of living and has taken to robbing trains. As the picture opens, he chooses the wrong train, crammed full of Custer's soldiers, and has to run for his life. He is hidden away by a demobilized soldier, hears hie new friend's story, and treks down to Wyoming, “where the grass grows so high you lose the cattle.” There Reb relieves his benefactor of horse and gun, intending to go farther south, but attracted in a matter of minutes by. gunshots which, he finds, have mortally wounded his “friend” and left his son and daughter helpless in the hands of well-organized cattle thieves. An honest robbery is all in the day’s work to Reb, but shooting unarmed men cuts right across his scale of values. He decides to stay on a little in Wyoming, and put things right for the orphans in his own way. It is a bad day for the cattle thieves when he makes this decision. Inside a few hours three of them are dead as the result of open battle with him, and the squatters are all on, his side. But it. is not quite so simple as that, and an exciting story has been built up around the character of this train-robber who cannot bear injustice and is afraid of nothing. Things might have gone badly for him if it had not been for his many friends; but even so, he is well able to take care of himself, and the slenderer bis chances the tougher he gets. This is an excellent Western, lifted out of the ordinary by a man whose acting in itself is enough to hold the attention throughout.