ENTERTAINMENTS

Manawatu Standard, Volume LX, Issue 124, 24 April 1940, Page 3

ENTERTAINMENTS

METEOR THEATRE. “THEY MADE ME A CRIMINAL.” “They Made Me a Criminal,” which opens at the Meteor Theatre on Saturday, is a tense and exciting Warner Bros.’ drama with a prize-ring background that co-stars John Garfield and the “Dead End” kids in a cast that also includes Claude Rains, Gloria Dickson, May Robson and Ann Sheridan. Aside, from ils merits as entertainment, “They Made Me a Criminal” is noteworthy because it is the fol-low-up of Garfield, young newcomer from the New York stage, to his sensational screen debut in “Four Daughters.” It is the answer of the Warner studio to the insistent public demand that the brilliant young actor be raised to stardom immediately. It presents Garfield as a lefthanded (this is important) prize fighter who, the day after he has .won the lightweight 1 championship of tlie world, learns by big stories in the newspapers that lie is supposed to have murdered a newspaper reporter and then been burned to death in an automobile accident while fleeing from the city. Ho drops out. of sight, and finds his way across the country. Eventually lie gets a job on an isolated California dale orchard and falls in love with the niece of the woman who owns the ranch. Seeking to get seme money for the two women, ho gets into the ring with a barnstorming heavyweight who offers £IOO a round to anyone who can la-st against him. This puts a suspicions detective on his trail, and leads to the thrilling and emotional . dramatic finish. Tho picture, which was an adanatation by Sig Hcrzig of a novel by Bertram Millhauscr and Beulah Marie Dix. was designed to exhibit the full range of young Garfield’s talents as well as io give the popular “Dead End’’ kids an opportunity to cinch tiieir hold on tho public’s fancy with their very distinctive type of entertainment. Tho production was directed by Bushy Berkeley.

STATE THEATRE. “HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME.” A romance between a gypsy girl and a mendicant poet, the unholy plotting of a powerful nobleman and the courage and self-sacrifice of a deformed outcast comprise the principal themes of “The Hunchback of Notre Dame.” the current impressive version of Victor Hugo’s classic. With Charles Laughton- scoring the characterisation triumph of his career as the pitiable and admirable Quasimodo, the cathedral bell-ringer, the film. also presents his new protege, Maureen O’Hara, as the gypsy dancer-heroine of this memorable offering. Laid in the Paris of 1482, “The Hunchback of Notre Dame” fakes place in and around tho famous Notre Dame cathedral, Sainte Chapellc and other landmarks which arc reproduced in enormous settings peopled with a record cast of 3500 players. When the gypsy is sentenced to the gallows for a crime oi which the King’s High Justice is guilty, Quasimodo saves her from the cxccutionei at the cost of his own life, hut not before he causes the nobleman’s confession and restores the dancer to her poet-lover. The stroming of the cathedral by a tnob which is singularly opposed by Quasimodo and the bell-ringer’s swift-moving efforts _ on the girl’s behalf form the gripping climax of the spectacle drama. Sir Cedric Ilardwieke, Thomas Mitchell, Edmond O’Brien, Alan Marshal, Walter Hampden and Katharine Alexander form a staunch support for Laughton in this RKO Radio picture directed by William Dietcrle.

MAYFAIR THEATRE. 1 t “THE BIG GUY.” t Co-starring Victor McLaglcn and Jackie ( Cooper in one of the most dramatic stories ’ fo conic out of Hollywood in recent months, New Universal’s “Tho Big Guy” screens to-day at tho Mayfair Theatre, j Mcl.aglen, whose rugged performances have won him the screen's highest acting honour, the Academy’s Award, portrays a prison warden who is trapped by the same motives he condemns in the convicts ■ under his care. Cooper has a new and different type screen role as the youth entangled in a web of circumstantial evidence which leads him into disaster. Heading the supporting cast is Ona Munson, who played Belle Waiting in “Gone with the Wind,” Peggy Moran, youthful screen beauty in tho romantic lead opposite Cooper, Edward Bropliy, the comedy-; menace, and Alan Davis, Jonathan Hale,

Russell Hicks and Milton Kibbe “Code of the Secret Service,” the second in the Warner Bros.’ series of pictures depicting the exploits of the Unitbd States Secret Service, showing to-day at the Mayfair Theatre, with Ronald Reagan again in the starring role, as in the - first film of the series, “Secret Service of the Air.” Reagan has 'been assigned the dangerous job of breaking up a band of counterfeiters operating across the Mexican border. In the course of his assignment ho narrowly escapes execution by Mexican authorities for the supposed murder of one of his own pals, and twice escapes death by a hair’s breadth when he falls into the hands of the gang. Daring secret sendee agents rout enemy spies, a phantom man steals the meteorite box and the hero crashes into a speeding train in “Thundering Rails,” the fifth exciting episode of “The Phantom Creeps, 12-chapter Universal serial showing to-day at the Mayfair Theatre with Bela Lugosi, Robert Kent, Dorothy Arnold and Regis Toomey in the starring roles.

Your friends will ask “where did you get it?” when you wear a frock of our beautiful wool bouclc cloth. And the colours are exquisite—twenty-five of them. Crushed rose, autumn rust, lake blue, glitter gold, grape rose, astral blue, clover, navy, black, and many other blues, greens, etc. Soft, perfect quality British woollens in 54 inch at 18s lid yard. 2£ to 2j cuts any frock. Collinson and Cunninghaine, Ltd. —Advt.