NEW REGENT

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 1026, 17 July 1930, Page 17

NEW REGENT

“CONDEMNED” TOMORROW The current programme at the New Regent Theatre will have its final presentation there this evening. This includes “Her Private Affair,” a drama starring Ann Harding, and “The GirJ Said No,” a William Haines comedy. The most unusual setting in picture history, the acting of such screen and stage stars as Ronald Colman, Ann Harding and Louis Wolheim, and the power of a story from the hands of two famous authors, are among the noteworthy features of “Condemned,” the new Samuel Goldwyn starring vehicle for Ronald Colman, which comes to the Regent Theatre tomorrow. Following close on the enormous success of “Bulldog Drummond,” “Condemned” is said to be an even greater triumph for Colman. Its story is adapted from “Condemned to Devil’s Island,” Blair Niles’s famous novel of life in the French penal colonies in South America. Sidney Howard, famed New York dramatist, put “Condemned” into screen form and wrote the dialogue. It is directed by Wesley Ruggles. In addition to Ronald Colman, in the starring role of the dashing French convict, the cast includes Ann Harding, Broadway stage star. Louis Wolheim, most noted character aclor on the screen, and Dudley Digges. “Condemned” is a story of romance growing between the mistreated wife of the warden of the prison on Devil’s Island and a convict whose sympathy for her plight ripens into love. Unique scenes of the interiors of prison shms and squalid gaols, thrilling escapes through tne tropical jungles, and all the atmosphere of a group of desperate criminals huddled together on what is known as “The Island of Living Death” combine to make “Condemned” one of the production sensations of the year.

Supporting Jack Oakie in “The Sap from Syracuse,” his second starring talkie, is an entire cast of prominent New York stage artists. Ginger Rogers plays opposite the star, and Betty Sturrock, Verree Teasdale, Granville Bates, Sidney Riggs and Malcolm Dunn head the support.