“H. M. PULHAM ESQ.”

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume 51, Issue 3154, 7 August 1942, Page 5

“H. M. PULHAM ESQ.”

FIRST-RATE PRODUCTION PROGRAMME AT REGENT HEDY LAMARR, ROBERT YOUNG “H. M. Pulham, Esq.,, based on J. P. Marquand’s best-selling novel, will show at the Regent Theatre on Saturday and Monday where its principal characters are enacted by Hedy Lamarr, Robert Young and Ruth Hussey.

The M-G-M picture follows the book with fidelity, recounting the life of Pulham, young (Bostonian, who, after Harvard and the World War* plunges into business activity in a New York advertising agency and meets the love of his life in an ambitious “career girl.” Then, unable to escape his destiny, he returns to his home town to marry the girl of his family’s choice, and, twenty years later, finds that when the opportunity conies he cannot recapture the romance of his youth.

Hedy Lamarr gives a crisp, incisive portrayal of Marvin Myles, the straightforward young business woman; Young is excellent in the title role of Harry Pulham, a role which sees him first as a college, boy and finally as a settled business man of middle age; and Ruth Hussey is effective as the woman he marries, a typically conservative -Boston aristocrat.

Others in praiseworthy roles include Charles Coburn and Fay Holden as Young’s parents, Bonita Granville as his younger sister, Van Heilin as Bill King, his closest friend, Douglas Wood, Charles Halton and Leif Erikson. *

• No little of the success of the production is due to the masterful direction of King Vidor, who has- not only brought the novel to the screen in a literal, and faithful version, but who has also *given authenticity and colour to a picturesque era in the life of America.

“H, M., Pulham, Esq., can be re- . commended as a distinguished screen . production and first-rate entertainment.