STATE THEATRE

Evening Post, Volume CXXVII, Issue 119, 23 May 1939, Page 6

STATE THEATRE

"Thanks For Everything."

A recent radio skit describing the invasion from Mars —which unexpectedly became one of the big newspaper stories of 1938—has an uproarious parallel in "Thanks For' Everything," the new 20th • Century-Fox comedy which opens tomorrow at the State Theatre. The victim of the hoax in this case is not the American public but a single > individual, Jack Haley, who wins a nation-wide contest to select Mr. Average Man. Haley proves to be worth a fortune to the promoters of the contest, who use him as a human barometer to test public reaction to everything from a br^and of cigarettes to the kind of hats women ought to wear. When a foreign diplomat offers a half-million dollars for a survey to determine the average man's attitude towards a possible war, Adolphe Menjou and Jack Oakie, Haley's astiute promoters, decide to put the issue up to their unsuspecting guinea pig. Menjou> arranges to have Hal»y laid up with an imaginary illness, and fires his" peace-loving soul with fake newspaper headlines announcing that war has been declared. Haley's reaction is completely pacifistic until, in desperation, Menjou stages a phony broadcast announcing the bombardment of the eastern seaboard. Mr. Average Man's resoonse to this news is said to give "Thanks For Everything" one of the funniest comedy climaxes ever filmed. The idea of any killer's victim avenging his own murder seems almost impossible without the aid of ghosts, spectres, vampires, or some other apparition from the nether world, but that bland Oriental sleuth, Mr. Moto, achieves this remarkable feat in his customary matter-of-fact manner in "Mr. Moto's Last Warning," the associate I film. Others in the cast include i Ricardo Cortez and Virginia Field.