MAJESTIC

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 1, Issue 107, 28 December 1931, Page 7

MAJESTIC

TO-NIGHT The same qualifications which made Richard Dix's portroyal of "Yance'y Cravat" memorable in the epoehal "Cimarron," carry him to equally great heights in Radio Pictures' dramatic "Young Donovan's Kid," which opens to-night at the Majestic. „ » His performanee in the latter triumph again proves a Hollywood canon, which reads, "If it's a Man's character, Dix should play it." As "Jim Donovan," gang leader in this adaptation of Rex Beach's "Big Brother," Dix gives an inspired performanee. Just as the personality of the star was made to order for "Yancey Cravat," so the character of Donovan must have been drawn from the stax's own rugged character, so perfectly does he fit into the part of this man of gangland. Dix, in Donovan's guise, is a hardboiled customer who thinks it takes more courage to be bad than good; that gentlemen are "softies," and that to love is to be sissified. He portrays a pugnacious battler who prefers but one gun, that the other brawny arm and steely fist be available for socking. When two great loves, one for a leathery-tough bowery waif, the other for a beautiful girl, reveal to Donovan that shooting "square," rather than accurately, is the proper highway to happiness; and when the law, .exclusably but erroneously bends its might to squashing his hopes, his loves and his efforts, Dix calls into play all the tremendous power he displayed in "Cimarron." Jackie Cooper, star of "Skippy," appears with Dix in "Yopng Donovan's Kid."