"Anne of Green Gables” Will Win Your Heart

Manawatu Times, Volume 60, Issue 66, 20 March 1935, Page 5

"Anne of Green Gables” Will Win Your Heart

THE DEAREST AML MUSIDELIGHTFUL FICTIONAL CHILD

(State: Screening Saturday.)

With all the gaiety, •whimsical imagination, tempestuous mooas, and. lovable nature t.iat has endeared her to fiction readers, for a quarter of a century,, “Anne of Green Gables’ ’ has come to life on tbe lotion picture screen, in a picture that proves a worthy successor to “Little Womexi,” RKO-Radio presents the orphan heroine whom Mark Twain once described as the

■’dearest and most moving and delightful child of fiction since the immortal Alice.”

As a novel, L. M. Montgomery’s “Anne of Green Gables” has won world-wide recognition as a classic of childhood and early youth. The picture, in this reviewer’s opinion, definitely falls into the same high classification.

Directed by George Nicholls, Jr., and portrayed by an ideal cast, including Anne Shirley, Tom Brown, 0. P. Heggie, Helen Westley, Sara Haden and others, the picture is one of great charm and strong heart-appeal. Powerful in its very simplicity and so human that it strikes a responsive cord in every breast, it will find universal favour.

Anne Shirley, the sixteen-year-old player, who adopted the namo of the character she portrays in the film, gives a superb performance as the orphan heroine. She has made good in a most impressive manner.

Tom Brown proves that he was the perfect choice to play Gilbert Blythe, Anne’s schoolboy beau. O. P. Heggie and Helen Westley, two of the finest character favourites of the stage and screen, add new laurels to their already impressive records by their portrayals of Matthew and Manila Cuthbert.

The story opens with Anne arriving at the farm home of Matthew and Marilia Cuthbert, to bo greeted by the dis-

maying knowledge that they had expected the orphanage to send them a boy. In showing how Anne makes herself the real centre of the "Green Gables" household and transforms the lives of Matthew and Marilla, the film also traces her romance with Gilbert Blythe. Starting with a schoolroom quarrel, the interest between the two youngsters develops, as the years pass, into adult love, although an old family quarrel rises from the ashes of the past to threaten their happiness. "Elderly couple apply to orphan asylum for a boy; by mistake a girl is' pent them.”

That faded entry into the notebook of L, M. Montgomery provided the inspiration which grew into "Anne of Green Gables," a novel which has been a best seller for twenty-six years.

Between making pictures in Hollywood, Jackie Coogan is studying to be a lawyer. His latest picture is Para-mount-'s "Home on the Range."