‘WHITE BANNERS' FILMED

Evening Star, Issue 23371, 14 September 1939, Page 8

‘WHITE BANNERS' FILMED

LLOYD DOUGLAS'S BEST SELLER

Carrying as its guarantee of engrossing interest and solid entertainment the tag, “from the novel by Lloyd C. Douglas,’’ the Warner Brothers’ Cosmopolitan production entitled ‘ White Banners,’ will come to the screen of the Regent to-morrow, with Claude Rains. Fay Bainter, Jackie Cooper, and Bonita Granville in the leading roles. This unusual story by the retired min- ■' ister is the third of his novels to be made into a motion picture. The other two were ‘ Magnificent Obsession 1 and 1 Green LigKt,’ and they proved conclusively that the film public likes the Douglas type of story as nnich as that great public which buys his books. In the picture, as in the novel, the dominant character is that of Hannah Parmalee. the toil-worn peddler who comes into the household of Paul Ward, the small town school teacher, at the troublous time and dei’otes herself unselfishly to the service of the Ward family. Necessarily condensed, the story of the picture deals mainly with the period in which Paul Ward invents an iceless icebox, and then reaches its climax in the discovery by Hannah that the adopted son of the town banker is her own child. What she does theieafter movingly illustrates the author's contention 'in behalf of the nobi'ity of the human spirit. The part of Hannah is played by Fay Bainter, long famous on the stage but only recently a recruit to notion pictures. Claude Rains is Paul Ward, his wife is played by Kay Johnson, Jackie Cooper is the youth who Hannah learns is her own, and his girl friend, the daughter of Paul Ward, is Bonita Granville.