DE LUXE THEATRE.

Evening Post, Volume CXXVII, Issue 75, 30 March 1939, Page 7

DE LUXE THEATRE.

"Manhattan Melodrama."

New York in the early years of the century when "Diamond Jim" Brady was a familiar figure and Lillian Russell was the toast of the town, lives briefly on the screen in "Manhattan Melodrama," which co-stars Clark Gable, William Powell, and Myrna Loy and openj tomorrow at the De Luxe Theatre. As a sort of prologue to the principal action, which is. laid in 1934, the picture re-creates one of the most horrible disasters in the big city's history—the fire and beaching of the excusion steamer General Slocurn, a tragedy that cost more than 1000 lives. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studio technicians re-enacted the entire disaster in and around the studio's stages, and made it one of the most spectacular scenes ever filmed. Re-created also is the famous Winter Garden roof, long since torn down where, in 1906, Harry Thaw killed Stanford White. A brief sequence of the picture takes place there. The Dempsey-Firpo fight in 1923 is still another of the big moments of metropolitan history that comes to life in "Manhattan Melodrama," forming a background for one of the dramatic scenes. The story itself deals with the careers of two boys. Gable and Powell, reared in the closest friendship and reaching middle life to find themselves on opposite sides of the law. Gable as a big-shot gambler, powerful and dramatic figure of the city's night life, and Powell as the district attorney forced to prosecute him for murder. Between them, loved by both, is Myrna Loy. College romance in the modern manner, with its inevitable problems of love and economics, provides the basis for the story of "Spring Madness," which will be the second feature, with Maureen O'Sullivan and Lew Ayres heading the cast. "Spring Madness" relates the predicament of a young student editor at Harvard who is in love with a girl at a neighbouring school. but painfully embarrassed on the financial side. Because it is next to impossible to get a job at home, he has pledged himself to two years abroad and his engagement appears to have been a mistake. He explains to the girl and she accepts it bravely, but under the surface she is hurt. The story follows their adventures in a series of amusingly complicated episodes which finally bring them together again.