Spencer Tracey Is Elevated To Stardom

Manawatu Times, Volume 59, Issue 219, 19 September 1934, Page 5

Spencer Tracey Is Elevated To Stardom

HELEN TWELVETREES AND ALICE FAYE SUPPORT CLEVER STAR (State, Screening To-aay.) For months critics have heen predicting that Spencer Tracy would soon emerge as a full fledged star. All that was needed, they said, was a part strong enough to bring out his latent dramatic talent. That part has come at last in the role of Murray Golden in the Fox picture, “When New York Sleeps.” Winfield Sheehan, who produced tho picture, came to that decision when filming was about half completed and announced that Tracy would be starred in this and future pictures. Tho film is a cavalcade of New York’s sporting and night life. The city’s most exciting years, from 1910 to 1932, are lived again in this powerful story of a woman’s love for a strange man. It is a story that has never been told before, revealing intimate details of a fascinating life, and tho dramatic events that led up to its tremendous climax in the man’s tragic, mysterious death. The fact that Tracy won stardom on the strength of his portrayal of Murray Golden is a good advance guide On the power of his performance. In tho picture, as in real life, Golden’s credo was “to live every minute I’m alive and die when I’m dead. . . to get all the fun there is out of life ... bo the head of the parade.” This is the idea from which Tracy creates a great characterisation, Hcleu Twelvetrces plays the important role of Virginit, the wife of Murray Golden. She is a girl of refinement who marries Golden and, because she loves him, overlooks his vices until she learns he has been unfaithful., And the blonde with whom Golden carries on a secret love affair for several years is portrayed by Alice Faye, the girl swept to overnight fame by her portrayal of Rudy Vallcc’s sweetheart in George White’s “Scandals.” Others in tho excellent supporting cast are Robert Gleckler, Henry O’Neill, Hobart Cavanaugh, G. P. Huntley, ,Tr., ; Vince Barnett and Shirley Temple. Ed- 1 win Burke of “Bad Girl” fame, wrote tho dialogue and also directed the pic- \ ] ture under Mr Sheehan’s personal super- I; vision. 1 1