NEW FILM FOR CIVIC

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXV, Issue 23135, 6 September 1938, Page 16

NEW FILM FOR CIVIC

"FOUR MEN AND A PRAYER" How four stalwart young men, with a grand old soldier-father, are bound bv a pledge to rove the world to avenge his dishonour and death is told in the dramatic film "Four Men and a Prayer," which is to commence a season at the Civic Theatre shortly. C. Aubrey Smith appears as Colonel Leigh, of the British staff headquarters in India, who is recovering from the effects of a drug in his drink when he is court-martialled and "broken" for causing the death of a number of soldiers in a pass in the hill country. Apparently an order over the colonel's signature brought about a removal of a detachment of troops and left the post vulnerable to revolting tribesmen. It is subsequently learned that both order and signature were forged. The colonel's four sons receive word of their father's plight. Wyatt, played by George Sanders, is a rising young Knglish barrister; Chris (David Nivcn) is an officer in the British Air Service; Geoff (Richard Greene) is attached io the British diplomatic service in Washington; and Rod (William Henry) is a student at Oxford. Colonel Leigh reaches the ancestral homo to be met by his four sons. He has proof that his dismissal resulted from the plotting of an international munitions ring, but before he can show his sons the documents which prove his innocence he is murdered and his brief-case rifled. The sons take an oath to clear their father's name and avenge his death. Two leave for India to take up the plotters' trails, another heads for Buenos Aires and the fourth remains in England to gather evidence at home. The romantic interest is supplied by lioretta Young, as Lynn, who is secretly in love with Geoff Leigh. I'iqued by his sudden and unexplained absence from America, she follows him to England, ft is subsequently revealed that she is implicated in the movement which caused the death of Colonel Leigh, although this is unknown to her.