EMPIRE

Evening Star, Issue 22445, 16 September 1936, Page 14

EMPIRE

Sparkling comedy, full of moments of thrilling excitement and romance make the screen play of ‘Three Live Ghosts,’ which is having a local season at the Empire, unusual entertainment. Featuring Richard Aden at the head of a fine cast, the story comes to the screen with a sweep and a breadth that were impossible on the stage, where it was very successful. Dealing with the adventures of three soldiers who returned _ from the war to find themselves officially dead,” the plot concerns their humorous wanderings through London without names or identities. One of them, Richard Arlen, is a wealthy American boy, who thinks the police are looking for him. The second, played by Charles M'Naughton, is a Cockney. The third, played by Claude Allister, is an English nobleman, who has been shell-shocked and has a mania for stealing things. Beryl Mercer as a Coc&ney mother is superb in the role she first created on the stage. Dudley Diggea, Nydia Westman, Jonathan Hwe, and others of the cast contribute excellent performances. * KLONDYKE ANNIE.’ Mao West has become an international institution, and in ‘ Klondyke Annie,’ which comes to the Empire on Friday, she consolidates her unique position on the screen. No one other than a superb actress could make convincing the amazing characters in which Mae West specialises—and in which she exploits the manners and costumes of the ’nineties for the entertainment of the present generation—but the response of filmgoers the world over to her first pictures left no doubt that Miss West had hit upon a gold mine when she created a modern version of the alluring ladies of New York’s golden age. In ‘ Klondyke Annie,’ the scene changes to San Francisco and Alaska, but for all that the spirit of the gay ’nineties is preserved intact. The story opens at a time when “ ’Frisco Doll ” is in sore straits. Indeed, for a few breathless moments it seems that the heroine is to be out of the story almost from the start, ■•but she escapes with the murder of a Chinese to her record, and takes refuge on a ship _ bound for Alaska. As it happens, this is an unwise move, and it is not until the fugitive lady _is almost converted by the genuine piety and goodness of a woman missionary- aboard the ship and has in turn become—temporarily—a missionary, that an unexpected happy ending is reached.