RUTH CHATTERTON.

Star (Christchurch), Volume LXVI, Issue 20277, 11 April 1934, Page 3

RUTH CHATTERTON.

Favourite Actress Has Lead in “Female.”

“ Happy Ever After,” a musical romance, starring Jack Hulbert and Lilian Harvey, heads the current programme at the Crystal Palace Theatre. “ Female,” starring Ruth Chatterton, which will come to the Crystal Palace Theatre on Saturday, tells the story of a woman with a business brain by day and a woman of passion by night—by day a moneymaker without sentiment, and by night a female Don Juan. Such was the woman that Alison Drake (Ruth Chatterton) thought herself to be In her great motor factory, her male employees were her industrial slaves, but some of them she singled out for lone fayours in the evening (after tht fashion that history or legend attributes to a great Roman Empress and to a great Russian Empress), only to throw them back into industrial slavery in the factory next morning. Men, argued Alison Drake, have always treated women like that—have treated women as slaves and playthings—and she would do the same with men. Cooper (Johnny Mack Brown) was in this way fooled by his employer-mistress, and so were other men, but her pride came to a fall when she tried the same tricks on her designing engineer, Jim Thorpe (George Brent). From this it will be seen that Alison Drake is a very unusual character, even for the screen, and an actress of Ruth Chatterton’s power and charm has a very unusual opportunity. In fact, the whole play is different from the ordinary run, and the stars, Ruth Chatterton and George Brent, make it a great success, aided by a good team of supporters, including Lois Wilson (who, as in “Seed,” plays the conventional mother of the old school). Box plans at the D.I.C.