ENTERTAINMENTS.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LX, Issue 164, 11 June 1940, Page 3

ENTERTAINMENTS.

STATE THEATRE. “SLIGHTLY HONOURABLE.” Rated one of the.season’s most sophisticated and amusing. film stories of scandal in high places, Walter Wanger’s “Slightly Honourable,” with a cast beaded by Pat O’Brien, Edward Arnold, Ruth Te’rry and Broderick Crawford,, shows today at the State Theatre through United Artists release. It was directed by Tay Garnett. This is a picture that strikes along- two entertainment fronts, coupling a strong dramatic plot with a smart comedy theme, and scoring successfully in both departments.' Cast on the Wanger theory of “the best available players for o.vnn the smallest roles.” the film feature'a line-up of supporting talent that includes Alan Dinehart, Claire Dodd, Phyllis Brooks, Janet Beecher, Bernard Nedell, Douglas Dumbrille, Eve Arden. Douglas Fowley, John Sheehan and many others. It introduces a new personality to local audiences. Ruth Terry, the “Little Cupcake” of Hollywood. Miss Terry is the 18-year-old actress Wanger pulled out of nowhere and placed in the leading role opposite Pat O’Brien. Although this is her first major screen role, advance reports claim the Irish miss handles her assignment like a. veteran, und more than holds her own in the face of real acting competition. Ruth is cast ns Ann Sey-. mour, a vivacious and lively night club entertainer, who adopts Pat O’Brien as “her man” when ho rescues her from a man-handling admirer. As John Webb, lawyer and suave man-about-town, Pat O’Brien is seen in a decidedly different typo of role. METEOR THEATRE. “ESPIONAGE AGENT.” “Espionage Agent,” the new Warner Bros, picture starring Joel MeCrca and Brenda' Marshall, which is now showing at the Mctoor Theatre, is a powerful and sensational drama of the unknown guardians of America’s peace during history’s most dangerous days. With almost magical prescience, the new picture, which was finished just before the outbreak of the war in Europe, foresaw the very situation which exists to-day, and it vividly depicts the danger to the nation which can be present even while the United States - remains neutral in a warring world, lit recalls the terribly destructive campaign of sabotage waged in America even before the United States went into the World War of 1914-18, and it warns the nation that steps should be taken to make the Government capable of coping with the forces which may be, and probably are, engaged to-day in planning again the same sort of industrial destruction throughout the nation. Making use of an exciting and romantic fictional plot against a background of authentic fact, the picture explains in vivid fashion how real the danger is. In the picture, the machinations of a ring of Gorman spies are defeated, hut it is not through the efforts of governmental forces but only by flic clever and courageous extra-legal activities of a young American diplomat and the girl who, he learns after he has married her, has been a tool of that spy ring.