DE LUXE THEATRE

Dominion, Volume 33, Issue 187, 4 May 1940, Page 16

DE LUXE THEATRE

The screen version of Booth Tarkington's “Seventeen” is the main item on the programme presented by the management of the De. Luxe Theatre this week. Jackie Cooper and Betty Field are the principals, and, fresh from their success in "What a Life,” give their characters the balance that enables the glamorous overtones of Betty’s sophistication to prove an effective foil for Jackie's perplexed, soulful, and love-stricken "Seventeen.” Jackie, as a lad anticipating manhood, sets out with a firm resolve to study for his college entrance examination, and tells his fellow-revellers that, in the future, it is the quiet life for him They press hmi to take a date that night with a visiting girl, but his will is strong, and he is only mildly interested. However, he meets a young damsel at the railway station, discovers that she is the visiting girl from Chicago, and, needless to say, is at the door for his date that night. She proves to be an experienced young miss—she wjjs almost a Mrs., but for her father, who caught up with her elopement before it got past “I do”—wheedling Jackie into buying a new car, borrowing his father’s dinner suit, taking her to a nightclub, and. as is only to be expected, losing his heart. Before long, Jackie is arguing with his father the advantages of an early marriage. On top of his amatory difficulties Jackie has to teach his family, specially a spying young sister, the prestige that should be afforded a seventeen-year-old. Credit must be given to young Cooper that his engaging manner, crackling voice, and determined face recall the exuberance and depression—felt at seventees over such momentous events as one’s first shave, first dress suit, first love — and first heartbreak. Good support is given to the principals by Ann Shoemaker, and the polished Otto Kruger, as the lads’ kindly, yet impatient, father. Th associate full-length item features the popular William Boyd, as “Hopalong ’ Cassidy, in “Law of the Pampas,” based on a story by Clarence E. Mulford. Boyd is supported by Steffi Duna, Russell (“Lucky”) Hayden, and Sidney Toler. “Hopalong” is this time opposing cattle rustlers, and, after many exciting sequences, brings just order out of criminal chaos.