SHEER COMEDY FDR ST. JAMES

Evening Star, Issue 21232, 13 October 1932, Page 5

SHEER COMEDY FDR ST. JAMES

WILLIAM POWELL IN ‘HIGH PRESSURE’ William Powell plays in a highly convincing way in the sheer comedy of the Warner Brothers’ production ‘ High Pressure,’ which commences at the St. James to-morrow. Mr Powell has, for him, the decidedly unusual part of a company promoter who, by intense enthusiasm for a project which appeals to him, is able to launch remarkably successful concerns and so earns a wide reputation in American business. It is not surprising then, that Gar Evans, the keen promoter portrayed by Mr Powell, should become enthusiastic when Ginsberg, a financier, approaches him with the object of founding a company to manufacture artificial rubber. Ginsberg has purchased the process of a German professor, but, unfortunately for Evans, the directors and tho staff of the company, the shareholders and himself, he does not find out, until all financial arrangements are completed for manufacture, that the “ professor ” is insane and his honours in education were purchased for 17dol at an insignificant American university. The antics of George Sydney, well known as the “Cohen” of “The Cohens and Kellys’ ” films, and the breadth of the financial imagination of Evans, who is prone to embark upon colossal schemes if he receives adequate encouragement from his fiancee, played by Evelyn Brent, is said to provide much amusement. The complexity of tlie situations arising in the story gives full scope to Mr Powell and Mr Sydney in exceptional comedy roles, and they are assisted in the lively humour by Frank M‘Hugh. Evans’s assistant, Guy Kibhee, the amusing if irresponsible president of the company, and Luis Alberni, the leading stock salesman. While Mr Powell and Miss Brent are involved in a tangled romance, there is also interest in the acting of two young players, Evelyn Knapp and Ben Alexander.