MARION DAVIES HAS STAR ROLE AT EVERYBODY’S.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 18467, 19 May 1928, Page 10

MARION DAVIES HAS STAR ROLE AT EVERYBODY’S.

Everybody has read “Quality Street”; if there is a balance in disfavour of reading, then those people have seen the play. Now conies the picture, produced with American care and magnificence, but still the exquisite Barrie piece, and Marion Davies, fair Marion Davies; plays Phoebe Throssel, the young “ English rose,” in whom ten years of the Napoleonic wars and absence from her lover, made just ten years’ difference in beauty; Phoebe, who was one of the old maids of Quality Street, who was losing her “ Doctor V. 8.,” but who won him back again. “ Quality Street ” comes to Everybody’s Theatre next week, and as everything points to an exceptional season, intending patrons are advised to book their seats at the Bristol Piano Company. This is a picture that is different all through. Hollywood has not marred Barrie’s delicate humour, his lively sense of the pathetic, his romantic flights; Marion Davies does not present an over-flighty Phoebe, neither does Conrad Nagel interpret the dashing Dr Brown from the viewpoint of 1928. “ Quality Street ” is a hark-back to the very early eighteen-hundreds, when a lady and a gentleman danced a gavotte, when a polka was frowned upon as being indelicate and modern; when young men and young women still fell in love; and old men made wars and young men fought them; and maidens were left lamenting their lovers, and Father Time crept on. Above all, “ Quality Street ” is a delicious satire on old maids’ scandal, told in Sir James's unique style, and winding up with something more romantic than hand-shakes at the end. When the Metro-Goldwyn Company decided to bring “ Quality Street ” to the screen, they approached the British Ambassador to Washington, Sir Esme Howard, with a request that he should go to Hollywood to cast the eye of criticism over the “ sets,” costumes, and the types assembled for the Barrie characters. His Excellency, accompanied by his lady, journeyed to Culver City, where “ Quality Street ” was produced under his notice. The picture is, therefore, essentially English, not merely in exteriors, in titles, in the obvious things, but English in spirit, the droll and lovable “ Englishness ” of Sir James Barrie, who is a Scotsman. The old maids, who visit Phoebe regularly for news of Dr Brown, who is “ at the wars,” step right out of the pages of the play, and best among these quaint women are Flora Finch as Mary Willoughby, and Helene Jerome Eddy as Susan Throssel. Kate Price, as Patsy, the Irish maidservant, again shows herself a capable and intelligent actress. But most interest centres in Phoebe, over whom the ten years are surely creeping; who instructs the sons and daughters of the nobility at the school which economic depression has compelled the Throssel sisters to open. Barrie must have created his Phoebe as an example of what the determined woman can do. Her motto was “ Get your man,” just as it is to-day, and she did it, despite that decade. The American film-producers have just managed to make a really worth-while and artistic picture out of a great play; it nearly becomes one of the great ones. Mr Albert Bidgood's Select Orchestra plays a musical programme of incidental music, old English compositions taking priority of place. The overture is “Musical Jigsaw” (Ketelby); suites, “Romantic” (Stanley), “Le Roi s’Amuse” (Delibes), “Down Vauxhall Way ” (Martin) ; overture.

“ Robespierre ” (Litolff) ; selections, “Lilac Time” (Clutsam). “Merrie England" (Edward German), “Drink to Me Only ” (words by Ben Jonson, music by Marquardt), “Gavotte in G” (Gluck), “Two Old English Pieces]’ (Ireland), "Viennese Dance” (Komijak) ; entr’acte. Miss Doreen Daly and Mr Albert Bidgood at two pianos, in Rachmaninoff's famous “ Prelude in C Sharp Minor,” and “ Polly,” by Kamecnik.