First-rate Adventure Thrill Full Of Comedy

Manawatu Times, Volume 60, Issue 274, 20 November 1935, Page 11

First-rate Adventure Thrill Full Of Comedy

ROBERT DONAT AS STAR SHOULD PROVE DRAW (State: Screening Saturday.) One of the greatest spy mystery stories ever written was John Buchan’s “The Thirty-Nine Steps,” and the author paid graceful. tributes to the adapters and producers of a real masterpiece of mystery in the picture which is so aptly acted hy Robert Donat and Madeleine Carroll in the principal parts.

The story opens m a music hall where the announcer is faced by an excited audience, which becomes so unruly that a free fight culminates in the sound of revolver shots. This is a signal for an unceremonious rush for the doors, a Canadian visitor rescues a girl from being crushed and pilots her out in safety. At her request ho takes her to his fiat and learns that she is a spy on the track of a certain Professor with lii missing finger-joint, who plans to

divulgo vital secrets of Britain’s Air Defences, and as she is later found stabbed to death, he is impelled to take up her work. Learning that tho base of the professor’s operations is in Scotland, ho loses no time in following up tho information imparted by tho girl, but as soon as ho arrives at Waverley Station, ho finds himself deeply involved not only in tho great spy mystery, but also in the responsibility for tho girl’s death. Quito a different Madeleine Carroll will be seen in the Gaumont-British-pro-

Busby Berkeley’s unfortunate automobile accident in which two women were killed, snatched him right off the dance direction of a scene in Warner Brothers’ “Stars Over Broadway.” Bobby Connolly, another ace Warner dance man, will substitute for Berkeley until the latter’s return from his sickbed.

duction of John Buchan’s “The ThirtyNine Steps.” In her last two films she has been a marble Venus. In “The Thirty-Nine Steps” she never gets a chance to bo either a Venus or marble. She is. dragged over rocks and under fences; and handcuffed for a wholo night to Robert Donat, 'whom (in the film) she hates. Others in the east include Lucy MiUnheiiu, Godfrey Tearle, Peggy Ashcroft, John Laurie, Helen Haye, Fr .k Collier, Wylie Watson, Peggy Simpson, Kato Cutler, Hilda Trevelyan.