“East Lynne” Begins Season Shortly

Manawatu Times, Volume LIV, Issue 6626, 12 August 1931, Page 5

“East Lynne” Begins Season Shortly

. So very popular has “East Lynne” proved with the public, and especially the womenfolk of New Zealand that it has been found necessary to extend its season for a second week at several Dominion theatre. This Fox talkie version of the famous play is in every way excellent, with a cast that is really brilliant, and it will well deserve enthusiastic support when it screens in Palmerston North at tho Regent on Saturday. Ann Harding plays the heroine, Lady Isabel, so charming and unutterably sad, with every attempt at happiness turning to bitterness and disillusionment. Conrad Nagel has the part of Robert Carlyle, the self-centred lawyer husband of Lady Isabel, and he acts tho priggish role to perfection. The other leading male role is enacted by Clive Brook, as Captain Levison, so tender and attentive at first, to fall away from grace as ho becomes “a man without a country.” Brook makes a splendid job of his part. As the overbearing sour, Puritanical sister-in-law of Lady Isabel, Cecilia Loftus has a difficult part, and so well does she act that sho earns the thorough hatred of tho audience in her attempts to restrain the flight of “the social butterfly.” Beryl Mercer maintains the high standard she set in “Three Live Ghosts,” as Joyce, the faithful nurse who lets Lady Isabel gratify her love for her child. “East Lynne” is a very comprehensive play, and much more complicated than the average modern production. In it there are love-interest, motherlove, the “eternal triangle,” society, and meddlesomeness.

“Man to Man,” the Warner Bros., and Vitaphono production, is a picture which trembles between laughter and tears —the people are so human, tho scenes of the little Kentucky town so warming, and the story of the love of a father for his son is so rich in drama and humour. A splendid cast of players appear in “Man to Man,” Phillips Holmes, Grant Mitchell, Lucille Powers, Otis Harlan and many others.