PLAZA THEATRE

Evening Post, Volume CXXV, Issue 122, 26 May 1938, Page 14

PLAZA THEATRE

"Adventures of Marco Polo."

The screen, which lately has focused a majority o its bigger productions on bSphical subjects, has seen many remarkable portraits of gratters taken from the past. Few of these historic personalities, however - enioved a life more significant and ro mantic than the Marco Polo so few pTople seem to know, whom Samue Goldwyn has chosen as the hero yt "The Adventures of Marco Polo," his rollicking adventurous romance which brings Gary Cooper.to the Plaza Theatre tomorrow. Marco Polo's journey to the thirteenth century court of the great Kublai Khan in Kambalu, Pei|ing! had as its object the extension of private commerce and the development of new trade' opportunities for the Polo brothers, Nicolo and Maffeo, Marco's father and uncle, who. were important merchants in the city ■• or Venice. Thus, as the worlds first travelling salesman, Marco set out for distant Cathay—a three years' journey through deserts and mountains, beset every mile or so by brigands and perils unknown to Western civilisation. The young Polo served Kublai Khan for 17 continuous years, years of tremendous dangeri' He finally left as the Khan's ambassador, charged with delivering the Circassian-Tartar Princess, Kogatin, over in marriage to Argon, the elderly Shah of Persia and Eastern India.- It is this last and most romantic episode in Polo's career that forms the basis for much of the story filmed by Goldwyn. Getting a girl to play the role of Kogatin (in the picture she is called Kukachin) was another problem which Goldwyn solved quickly. Over a year ago he placed a young Norwegian girl named Sigrid Gurie under contract and forbade her appearance in public. He settled her in the Hollywood Hills, ; kept photographers and interviewers from her, and 10 months later, in a typical Goldwyn gesture, placed her in the lead opposite Gary Cooper. N