GREAT BRITISH CAST

Evening Star, Issue 21628, 25 January 1934, Page 9

GREAT BRITISH CAST

SYBIL THORNDIKE'S TALKIE DEBUT Dame Sybil Thorndike, leader of the English stage, will make her initial appearance m talking pictures at the St. James Theatre to-morrow, when British Dominion Films will present the Gaumont-Gainsborough screen version of Stanley Houghton’s world-famous plav, ‘ Hindle Wakes.’ . . ‘ , The title of this drama is derived from a very ancient Anglo-Saxon custom. Nowadays these old. festivals take the form of fairs surviving mostly in Lancashire. Opening among the revels at Blackpool, a beautiful storv is unwound, showing the loves . and hates of the folk of an English industrial centre, working up to an effective climax. Included in the cast are Edmund Gwenn (last seen in Tell To-night ’ and * The Good Companions’), John Stuart (whose performances in ‘ln a Monastery Garden and ‘ The Lost Chord * have placed him among the foremost stars of the day), Norman M/Kinnell, and Belle ChryThe story opens in the amusement park at Blackpool. Jenny Hawthorn meets Allan Jefcoate, son of the proprietor of the mill where she works. Unable to persuade his fiancee to accompany him to the wakes, Allan makes friends with Jenny, and later they decide to spend a holiday together. On her return Jenny, blissfully ignorant that the girl mend whom she had entrusted with a letter proving an alibi as to her absence, bad been killed, maintains an attitude endeavouring to deceive her parents. Hawthorn is too fond of his daughter to be really angry, but his distress is aggravated when he learns that Jenny s partner in social crime is the son or his friend Jefcoate,. sen. Though after working side by side one had prospered and the other had made no headway, there still existed between both men a friendship that social station could never alter. Eventually a conference is called between all parties, and the story continues to a climax which meets with the approval of all.