ENTERTAINMENTS

Waipa Post, Volume XXIV, Issue 1578, 25 November 1924, Page 5

ENTERTAINMENTS

EMPIRE THEATRE—TO-NIGHT

“STEPHEN STEPS OUT.”

Douglas Fairbanks jr. need not stand in the reflected light of his father’s fame for popularity as a screen star. In “Stephen Steps Out,” the starring attraction lat the Empire Theatre to-night, one takes an instinctive liking to young Dug, for !he has a distinct and pleasing personality. The story in which he is featured as his first starring vehicle for Paramount is an adaptation of “The Grand Cross of the Crescent,” by Richard Harding Davis, a popular Saturday Evening Post writer. It tells of the son of a wealthy father who is sent to Turkey after failing in an examination, that he might study the more, assiduously. Then adventure crosses the path of the youth, and boylike lie forsakes tutor and studies to enter into an Eastern political crisis. The story is a most logical one and in the supporting cast are Theodore Roberts and Noah Beery. “DAUGHTERS OF THE,RICH.” The above, a Master picture, is a society drama lavishly produced, and filled with incidents and suspense. It is woven around the marriage of a young girl with a dissolute duke. For the most part the scenes are set in Paris, in gorgeous apartments, and the most fashionable hotels. Paris dazzles in her gayest mood. The caste is particularly worthy of note—Miriam Cooper gives a thoughtful and artistic characterisation of a girl whose happiness was closely followed by tragedy; Ruth Clifford plays the part of the disillusioned wife of the duke, which character is skilfully drawn by Stuart Holmes; Gaston Glass makes an attractive hero in the complicated position of being loved by two beautiful women. “ THE FIGHTING BLADE.” EMPIRE THEATRE, WEDNESDAY. Almost every girl has the secret ambition to see herself in man’s garments. Most every girl also harbours a secret desire to fight like a man. It was given to Dorothy Mackaill, a Ziegfeld Follies girl with no little experience on stage and screen, to do both in John S. Robertson’s production, “The Fighting Blade,” a First National picture starring Richard Barthelmess, to be screened at the Empire Theatre to-morrow (Wednesday) night. “I liked my role in “The Fighting Blade” better than any I have ever had because I had opportunity to wear a youth’s clothes' and to fight. And your youth’s clothes were adorable. More fascinating than any of the costumes Mr Ziegfeld gave us to don—and that’s saying a lot. They were not the straight line things of to-day, however, but handsome things of silk and satin, such as men wore in the Cromwellian era. And the fight Not a fist-fight, surely, but with a sword and pistol! And it did - give me a thrill! I’ll say it did.”