BRILLIANT ACTING

Evening Star, Issue 22274, 27 February 1936, Page 6

BRILLIANT ACTING

• SHADOW OF DOUBT ’ FOR ST. JAMES In ‘ Shadow of Doubt,’ Metro-Gold-wyn-Mayer’s detective mystery, based on Arthur Somers Roche’s sensational ‘ Collier’s Magazine ’ serial, which will be screened at the St. James to-mor-row. Constance Collier is cast as a millionaire recluse who, when danger threatens her loved ones in a murder mystery, emerges from solitude to become a feminine Sherlock Holmes. Startlingly different is the role, sometimes flippant, with comedy predominating, from such roles as ‘Trilby, 1 Camille,’ ‘ Cleopatra,’ and others in which Miss Collier won renown. In the new picture she is one of a notable cast. Virginia Bruce plays the heroine, as Trenna, a screen star, and Ricardo Cortez the hero, as Miss Collier’s pub-licity-man nephew. Isabel Jewell, Arthur Byron, Betty Furness, Regis Toomey, Ivan Simpson, Bradley Page, Edward Brophy, Samuel S. Hinds, Richard Tucker, Bernard Siegel, and Paul Hurst are in the cast. The story was purchased while still running in the magazine, so confident of it were the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer officials. Laid in New York, dealing with society, theatrical and night club life, it solves a detective mystery in a new and astounding manner. Though the central theme is mystery drama, it is played in a rich vein of comedy throughout most of its sequences. A lavish musical interlude featuring the song hit, ‘ Beyond the Shadow of a Doubt,’ adds spectacle. Roche, the author, has given the screen many outstanding hits in adaptations of Jus faction writings, notable among them being ‘ Penthouse,’ also produced by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.