GREEN ISLAND THEATRE

Evening Star, Issue 21753, 22 June 1934, Page 10

GREEN ISLAND THEATRE

NORMA SHEARER IN 1 SMILIN' THROUGH ' Norma Shearer’s finest talkie, ‘ Smilin’ Through,’ directed for Metro-Goldwyu-Mayer by Sidney Franklin, with a supporting cast headed by Fredric March, Leslie Howard, O. P. Heggie, and Ralph Forbes, will be screened at the Green Island Theatre to-morrow afternoon and at night. In this lavish production Norma Shearer for the first time in her career plays a dual role. Miss Shearer portrays both the tragic Moonyeen in the Victorian sequences and Kathleen Sheridan in the modern scenes around which the happier romance of the tale centres. It is Miss Shearer’s first venture into the unusual in drama. In the talking screen version of ‘ Smilin’ Through,’ Miss Shearer has an advantage which was not permitted'in the stage production. First as the intended bride and then as the ward of Sir John Cartaret, the r 'o which Leslie Howard plays, Miss Shearer is able to return in fantasy to the mind of her brooding lover—in which moments of reverie she appears twice in a single scene. Thus, although the story covers a fifty years’ lapse of time, during which Leslie Howard grows from youth to white-haired old age, Miss Shearer remains youthful throughout. It is, the star concedes, her severest dramatic test to date.