REGENT THEATRE

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 83, Issue 69, 23 March 1939, Page 9

REGENT THEATRE

"PRISON BREAK" AND "THE MINSTREL BOY” Barton Mac Lane and Glenda Farrell turn their talents to stark and thrilling drama in Universal's "Prison Break," which is screening at the Regent Theatre to-day. Mac Lane and Miss Farrell, who have been starring in the “Torchy Blanc" series of laughmakers, are cast as the central characters in a moving story of the evils of the U.S.A, prison parole system. Mac Lane will be seen as a tunafisherman who assumes the burden of another's crime and is sentenced to a term in San Quentin. For his heroic share in the suppression of a murderous prison riot and wholesale jail-break, he is paroled. But he finds himself unable to secure honest employment, breaks his parole and considers a lite of crime. Miss Farrell is cast as his sweetheart, who ultimately convinces him that his best

course is to return to prison. The supporting roles are played by a hand-picked cast which includes Paul Hurst as a prison stoolpigeon; Constance Moore, as Mac Lane’s sister; Ward Bond as a prison bully and ringleader; Edward Pawley as a fisher-man-rival of Mac Lane’s; Edmund MacDonald, as Mac Lane’s first mate; John Russell, capable child player, as Miss Farrell’s son; Frank Darian, as a philosophic “lifter,” and Victor Killian as Glenda’s stern father. In “The Minstrel Boy” on the same programme, the title refers to the leader of a popular dance band (Fred Conyngham), who falls in love with the scion of a snobbish county family, marries her, and Introduces her to his own rowdy set culled from the purlieus of Archer Street. When an old flame (Chili Bouchier) makes a dead set for her husband, the young wife (Lucille Lisle) returns to her ancestral home and the protection of a former suitor. How she discovers she has misjudged her husband and rescues him just in time from suicide makes a dramatic finish. Six new hits are sung in this picture “Moonlight Madonna,” “Sweet Muchacha,” “Tango Town,” “The Best Thing in Life,” and “The Minstrel Boy.”