ENTERTAINMENTS

Southland Times, Issue 20012, 28 October 1926, Page 9

ENTERTAINMENTS

CIVIC PICTURES. DOUGLAS MACLEAN, LEWIS STONE AND ANNA Q. NILSSON. Genuine humour was the dominant note sounded throughout the new programme submitted at the Civic. The star film was a delightful comedy, entitled “Introduce Me,” which served to show that clever comedian, Douglas McLean, at his very best. The story opens in Paris, where two young American tourists decide to have “a little flutter” at Monte Carlo. While one of them goes to procure the railway tickets the other catches sight of a beautiful girl, with whom he falls in love on the spot. An attempt to procure an introduction fails embarrassingly and while the hero is waiting disconsolate on the platform he is mistaken for a famous American Alpine climber, and with the latter’s boy and baggage he is bundled incontinently aboard the train for Switzerland, where also the girl has gone. When the real Alpine climber arrives on the scene he sportingly insists that the hero go through with the masquerade, and compels the trembling hero to enter for an Alpine climbing contest. The crowded house screamed with laughter as this riot of merriment was unfolded. The merriment was kept up throughout the first National Picture, “Too Muph Money.” Starring as it does Lewis Stone and Anna Q. Nilsson, this picture has, besides a remarkably clever story, the excellent acting of these two brilliant artists to lend still more interest to it. There are times in a man’s life when he can well imagine he has too much money. When wealth proves but a medium for hectic distraction, when it is the channel for a hundred freakish whims, when it robs a man of his wife’s company, then, indeed, it is a superfluous matter. And a man in love does strange things. The hero of this diverting comedy drama is as original as the theme of the- picture, a faintly cynical man, but given to evolving some very ingenious plans for the re-creation of conjugal affections. He succeeds, but only after a hard struggle in which humour and comedy are delightfully blended with some of the most thrilling situations a married man ever found himself in. Lewis Stone, for his masterly handling of the leading role, commands sympathy and admiration, both for the difficulties of his state in the purely

professional sense, and for his polished and dignified bearing in the course of the picture. Anna Q. Nilsson does some exceptionally good work. Then there is a screamingly funny Mermaid comedy and a Pathe Review—an ideal and excellent programme. ALBION THEATRE. “STELLA DALLAS,” AND ‘THE GREAT DIVIDE.” The “house full” sign was called into requisition at a very early hour last night at the Albion, and this for the third time this" week. Sheer entertainment, that quality which sends one out of a theatre feeling finer, freer, and strengthened, is the dominant note that, permeates the Henry King production of “Stella Dallas,” presented by Samuel Gokiwyn as a United Artists picture. Beneath each tear is the smile, beneath the smile the pathos. The spirit of entertainment based on romance pervades “Stella Dallas.” Fads, fancies and foibles of the feminine, following fashion’s latest decrees of both the “intime” and drawing room variety, play their active and interesting parts in tile photoplay “Stella Dallas,” which will be screened for two more nights at the Albion. “Stella Dallas,” adapted by Frances Marion from Olive Higgins Prouty’s novel, has been called a woman’s picture attractive to men and women. Its story deals with the romantic love-life of a girl, Stella, at eighteen, twenty-five and thirty-five. It pictures the urgings and surgings of her heart and reveals in both vivid and imaginative outline the resultant drama, occasioned by her yearnings and her conflict with convention. Her romance, her marriage, her flirtations, her beautiful child, her advent into society, and her final realisation of all she could give for happiness, are the romantic high-fights of this photodrama of American life, directed by that master of sympathetic interpretation, Henry King, and sponsored by Samuel Goldwyn, as his first picture for United Artists Corporation. All of fashion’s aids to make heauty more beautiful enter into the scheme of the drama. Gorgeous gowns worn by Alice who plays Helen Morrison, and the wedding costume of Lois Moran, who plav=: Laurel, are said to be ravishing to the eye. Evening ' gowns, street wear, hats, ail of latest, mode and trim form a . veritable parade for feminine delight. Belle Bennett, who plays the title role of Stella, employs paint, powder, mascara, jewels, permanent, wavers, wrinkle removers «and an array of frawinme. >

adjuncts that everyone readily associates with the kind of girl Stella is. There are “she-women” as well as “-he-men” in Arizona, particularly the part of that state which serves as a background for Metro-Goidwyn-Mayer’s “The Great Divide,” which opens to-night at the Albion. This remarkable and picturesque country is the home of the Hopi Indians and in this tribe is seen a reversal of the Caucasian conception of things wherein women are regarded as the “gentler sex.” To* the Hopi there is nothing strange in the fact that the women build the homes and the men weave the , women’s .garments, knit the stockings and follow other so-called feminine occupations. Conway Tearle is the roiigh, unpolished Stephen Ghent of “The Great Divide,” which was directed by Reginald while Alice Terry, plays the part of the gently bred New Englands girl. Wallace Beery, Zasu Pitts, Huntly Gordon, Allan Forrest, Ford Sterling, William Orlam on d and George Cooper are also included among the players. Plans are at the Bristol or reservations may be made by ringing the Albion Theatre direct No. 738.