STAGE FOLK LIKE NEW ZEALAND

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 242, 3 January 1928, Page 9

STAGE FOLK LIKE NEW ZEALAND

CANADIAN GIRL WHO STARRED ON BROADWAY CHAT WITH GWENYTH GRAHAM Evidently actors and actresses who visit New Zealand and Australia carry away such delightful impressions that everw other actor and actress they meet wants to visit us. It was these glowing reports which tempted Gwenyth Graham to leave the bright lights of Broadway. She arrived by the Niagara yesterday, en route to Sydney, where she will play the leading roles with Leon Gordon's new company. Miss Graham is a Canadian, tall, slender, and so charming that everybody who was leaving the ship at Auckland flocked round her to say good-bye yesterday afternoon. She spent her school days in Belgium, and later in England. Miss Graham’s birthplace is Montreal. When she returned from school she played in productions which were staged to raise funds for charity, and thus paved a path which led to the time when her name flashed in large letters outside the theatres in New York. But she had always wanted to be an actress. As a child she had organised plays and entertainments, and she was not happy until she had won her way into a touring company.

Miss Graham’s latest New York engagement was as Venice in the much-talked-of play, “The Green Hat,” which was not a success in Australia. It had a long run in America, despite the criticism of its theme.

“My first engagement was with a stock company in America,” she said yesterday. “It is hard work playing stock, but very good experience.” Mies Graham played in New York in “The Enchanted Cottage,” then in “The Cat and the Canary,” and later in “The Green Hat.”

Two of the most popular shows in New York when she left were “Coquette” with Helen Hayes, and “The Letter,” the Somerset Maugham play which is to be done here by Irene Vanbrugh. “Broadway” and “Burlesque,” two plays with the theatre as their theme, are enjoying big runs. Talking of the controversy regarding objectionable plays, Miss Graham said that some of those she saw in America before she left were rather lurid. She saw a production of Eugene O’Neil’s, “Desire Under the Elms,” and to her the most repulsive part of it was the reaction it had on the audience. LEON GORDON RETURNS

Leon Gordon, who is also on the Niagara on his way to Australia, said that he will produce three plays for his next tour. They will be “The Trial of Mary Dugan,” “Interference,” a play by Sir Gerald Du Maurier, ai\d “Nightsticks,” another name for the batons carried by policemen. For matinee performances he will do a play of his own called “The Man Upstairs,” and Galsworthy’s “Escape.” Since his last visit here with “White Cargo,” Mr. Gordon has toured the world, and looked at things theatrical everywhere. He has brought with him, in addition to Miss Graham, Brandon Peters, Frederick Roland and Iris Roland. The other members of his White Cargo” company will join him m Australia, for the Australian and New Zealand tour.