ACADEMY AWARD WINNERS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23528, 17 June 1938, Page 4

ACADEMY AWARD WINNERS

FEATURED IN “ BIG CITY” In “ Big City,” wliich will be shown to-day at the Empire Theatre, Luise Rainer once again demonstrates her flair for versatility in acting. A far cry from her Academy Award winning roles in “ The Good Earth” and “The Great Ziegfeld ” and the direct opposite of her recent portrayal of the Countess in “The Emperor’s Candlesticks,” her new role places her as a simple Rumanian girl who has left her fatherland to come to ( America, the “ land of hope,” where she falls in love with a rough-and-ready taxi cab driver only to be precipitated into a dramatic catastrophe in which police courts, a murder, racketeers, and Ellis Island loom up as foreboding aspects of her new civilisation. The part of her husband is played by Spencer Tracy, whose performance in “ Captains Courageous ” won him the Academy Award in 1937. Tracy personifies the breed to which all’s fair in love or taxi cab. war. He refuses to be bullied in a war between two factions and is trapped by unprincipled racketeers. He fights for business and for freedom from the shackles of the gang. Then, in the knowledge that every man has his price, the racketeers engineer the deportation of the girl. Now the taxi cab driver really fights for his rights. He blocks the gang and gets to the mayor himself, dining in a great restaurant which the intimates will recognise as Jack Dempsey’s place onoosite Madison Square Garden, in New York. The scene was actudly made there. Frank Borzage, who is still remembered for “Humoresque.” directed this picture. The story was written and produced by Norman Krasna, young New York playwright, now with Metro-Goldwyn-Maycr.