AMUSEMENTS.

Wairarapa Daily Times, 31 December 1927, Page 3

AMUSEMENTS.

OPERA HOUSE. Buck Jones, hard-riding Fox Films star, will begin a three-day engagement at the Opera House to-night in “Whispering Sage,-” a tense drama of the south-west in which the popular Western ace is seen at his best in some hair-raising situations. The action centres about the love and homestead of Mercedes, a charming daughter of a Basque patriarch, who is threatened by a hand of desperadoes headed by Hugh Acklin an unscrupulous rancher with a band of thugs under his control. Buck, bent upon avenging the death of. his brother, who has been shot under strange circumstances, rides into the Basque country, wholly in ignorance of the critical situation. When the father of Mercedes is assassinated, Acklin figures it will be comparatively easy to switch the blame .to Buck. From this moment, until the smashing climax in which Buck is vindicated, there is action in every sequence and the finish brings on a light . seldom equalled on the silver sheet. Pictorialjy the release is one of the most beautiful offerings the Western star has offered in recent -months. Natalie .Joyce, a little southern beauty, has the leading feminine role. Roscrves at Yaro’s. COSY THEATRE. “The Telephone Girl,” which will be screened to-night only at the Cosy Theatre, is a' drama with considerable heart interest. The plot is of a familiar kind, the action doaling with a fight between opposing political parties in which an attempt is made to ruin the future of a candidate for governor. The scene where tho heroine, who works at a hotel switchboard, is shown intervening to prevent a ’phone message from going to a newspaper because it would ruin the. good name of a woman, whom she tries to shield, steadily refusing, though threatened with jail, to give up the telephone number to a big political boss, is dramatic. The tension holds to the last moment, when the political boss finds out that he had unconsciously been trying to blacken his own daughter 's reputation. The ending is a happy one and should please most picture-goers. Madge Bellamy does well in the heroine’s part; May Allison is good as the woman who had erred; Warner Baxter gives a fine impersonation of the man whose futuie was threatened by his political enemies; Holbrook Bliiin, as the big politician. and Lawrence Gray, his son, who loves the heroine, give excellent performances. The plot was adapted from the play by William C. Do Mille. Herbert Brenoii has directed the picture skillfully from a scenario by Elizabeth Meehan. Reserves at Vare’s.