MAJESTIC THEATRE.

Evening Post, Volume CXXV, Issue 69, 23 March 1938, Page 6

MAJESTIC THEATRE.

«Bir City"

Now the humble taxi-driver comes into his own as a movie hero. No less a figure than Spencer Tracy, last year's Academy Award winner, appears to symbolise the hero behind the wheel. Luise Rainer, who was O-Lan, the Chinese woman in "The Good Earth," appears as his immigrant wife. "Big City" is a pretentious picture in that it sets out to paint a canvas of life as it is in the whirling maelstrom of the crowded places. It is a simple, beautiful thing because it accomplishes exactly that. Tracy becomes a hackman. Unshaved, laconic, and suspicious of everything that walks on two feet or rolls on four wheels, he typifies the species which flourishes in spite of hardship in every city. This is the picture that will commence at the Majestic Theatre on Friday. Luise Rainer, 1936 and last year's Academy Award winner for female roles, becpmes the lowly, half-frightened foreign girl, soon to become a mother, terrified with the threat of the big town, yet ready to live or die for the husky-voiced mate who drives home in his cab between fares. Tracy personifies the breed to which all is fair in love or taxi-cab war. He refuses to be bullied in a war between two factions and is trapped by . unprincipled racketeers. He figjits for business and for' freedom from the shackles of the gang. Then, ■in the knowledge that every man has his price, the racketeers engineer the deportation of the girl. Now the taxi-cab driver really starts to fight. He blocks the gang and gets to the Mayor himself, dining in a great restaurant. Jack Dempsey's place opposite Madison Square Garden in New York. The scene was actually made there. A notable gathering of sporting men are in the film, some recognisable by their cauliflower ears and other marks, including diamonds and immaculate haberdashery. Frank Borzage, who is still remembered for "Humorcsque," directed this picture. The-supporting cast includes Charley Grapewin, Janet Beecher, Eddie Quillan, Victor Varconi, Oscar O'Shea, Helen Troy William Demarest, John Arledge, Irving' Bacon, Guinn Williams, and Regis Toomey. "Big City" is a faithful story of a side of life with which few people are in the least familiar. ,