“PAYMENT DEFERRED.”

Horowhenua Chronicle, 24 June 1933, Page 3

“PAYMENT DEFERRED.”

STRONG ATTRACTION AT REGENT THEATRE. “Payment Deferred,” filmization of one of London’s outstanding stage ■hits, will be shown at the Regent Theatre on Saturday. Known as the mystery drama with the most starling climax ever devised, ‘Payment Deferred” tells the- story of a murderer who escapes detection for his own crime only to be convicted later for a crime which he did not commit. The significant feature of the play, both in its London and New York productions, was the sensational performance of Charles Laughton as the middleclass bank clerk who is driven to murder his rich nephew to save himself and his family from a debtor’s prison. It is this same Charles Laughton who enacts the murderer in the film version. Laughton, whose distinguished work' on the English stage 1 has won him the title' of the English “Emil Jannings, y makes his second appear-

ance on the screen in “Payment Deferred.” Maureen O’Sullivan has the |)art of Winnie, Laughton’s daughter, whilst the difficult role of the murderer ’s wife is handled by Dorothy Petersen, who will be remembered for her excellent work opposite Walter Huston in “Beast of the City.” Yerree Teasdale, who. recently scored in “Skyscraper Souls,” has the part of a blackmailing Prench milliner, and t the role of the murdered nephew is played by Ray Milland. The cast also includes Billy Bevan, Halliwell Hobbs and William Stack. Among the picture’s dramatic highlights are the scene in which the bank clerk poisons his nephew; •the tense moment when his wife dis- 1 covers his secret; his constant terror lest the body of the victim, buried in the garden, be discovered; the suicide of his wife, and the bitterly ironic episode in which the authorities seize the bank clerk for a murder of which he is innocent, but which he cannot explain without confessing his real crime. The picture was directed by Lothar Mendes.