EMPIRE

Evening Star, Issue 23382, 27 September 1939, Page 2

EMPIRE

An idealistic young lumberjack who starts out to protect his beloved forests from the ravages of ruthless commercial interests is the central figure in ‘ Valley of the Giants,’ which is at the Empire. Thousands have read Peter _B. Kyne’s thrilling tale of the Californian redwood forests; thousands have been looking forward to its appearance as a film. It has lost nothing in the telling, and the drama and excitement of tho hook is heightened by Warner Brothers. Leading character is popular Wayne Morris, and Claire Trevor has her biggest part for sime time in the feminine starring role. As the story unfolds we find the grasping timber merchants > setting ■ out destroy the young man who has set himself at the head of the roistering lumbercamp men. BUCHANAN AND HORTON. Being married to a detective is no fun for the wife, but lots of fun to the onlooker, as the next picture at the Empire, < The Gang’s All Here, 'will show. The detective is Jack Buchanan and the hapless wife Googie Withers, a voung comedienne who should find a niche in the entertainment world. Googie objects to Jack’s emerging from retirement to solve just another buiglary after having once said good-bye to a lifetime of alarms and excursions. Knowing “ these men,” she agrees to give Jack his head for yet another case She does not make ranch trouble when Jack and Edward Everett Horton rehearse a murder at odd intervals, her surprise is mild when her town flat is wrecked by burglars and Jack’s henchman, played by Syd Walker, falls, bound and gagged, from her wardrobe at bedtime. With great aplomb she stuns a gunman and enters a night club run by criminals. What does annoy her is when Jack persists in saying they have been married eight years. Googie says -seven. Jack says their son, a purely hypothetical child, shall be called Lucien and go to Eton —Googie insists furiously that his name shall be Howard and Harrow will be the school. All of which is a true if comic comment on trouble in married life.