Real Mystery by Late Edgar Wallace

Manawatu Times, Volume 61, Issue 47, 26 February 1936, Page 11

Real Mystery by Late Edgar Wallace

“MYSTERY LINER” WILL CREATE MUCH INTEREST (Kosy: Screening Wednesday next). Those inconsequential littlo items about scientific oddities that the average reader passes over so quickly in tho newspapers, would hardly seem to contain enough meat to form the basis of, a sevenreel mystery thriller, but to a practiced screen-writer it takes only one such item to open up a wide field of imagination.

Such was tho case with Wellyn Totman, tho scenarist who adapted Edgar Wallace’s mystery story, "The Ghost of John Holling,” under its screen title of “Mystery Liner.” When Paul Malvern, Monogram producer, assigned to Totman the task of adapting the novel, the writer found one essential thing lacking in the story The novel read well in.type, and the plot was there,* but the basis could not be made into a picture. It was just one of those things that required pages of written explanation.

So Totman finally remembered an item ho had read in a Los Angeles paper, telling of experiments by the United States Navy in remote control of the battleship "Utah.” Ho pondered the method used, and finally arrived at a solution that formed a new basis on which to build tho structure of the Edgar Wallace plot. In the cast of the Monogram photoplay are Noah Beery, Astrid Allyit, Gustav von Seyffertitz, Cornelius Keefe, Edwin Maxwell, Ralph Lewis, Gordon Demaine, and Georgo Hayes. William Nigh was the director.